This paper was produced for the 2019 NAFEMS World Congress in Quebec Canada

Resource Abstract

Aerospace industry is driven by weight constraints and structures lightening to ensure better performances and higher fuel economies, ultimately providing a greater flying experience to customers. Switching from mechanical to fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system pursue this target. Significant system weight reduction is due to the lower weight of electrical components, to the lightening of aircraft structure (less mechanical stress and chocks in the structure since movements of flight controls are converted to electronic signals transmitted by wires) and to airframe weight savings (stability surfaces can be made smaller). Another big advantage is an increased flight efficiency thanks to automatic stability systems and closed feedback loop control. All this leading to drastic cut in fuel consumption.



Master integration of heterogeneous components, ensure quick development and implementation of a new architecture, innovate without disrupting existing enterprise intern environment (roles, organization, IS/IT) are some of the main challenges to be faced to get these promising benefits. Throughout this paper, we will demonstrate how KARREN has been used to manage the pre-design of a sub-component of the flight control system and how it helped to leverage designers work and to obtain quickly new flight control system fulfilling initial objectives.