Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Whitespace Exploration, Jason Lloyd Daniel

Master's Theses

As engineering systems grow in complexity so too must the design tools that we use evolve and allow for decision makers to efficiently ask questions of their model and obtain meaningful answers. The process of whitespace exploration has recently been developed to aid in engineering design and provide insight into a design space where traditional design exploration methods may fail. In an effort to further the research and development of whitespace exploration algorithms, a software package called Thalia has been created to allow for automated data collection and experimentation with the whitespace exploration methodology.

In this work, whitespace exploration is …

Space Access Systems Design: Synthesis Methodology Development For Conceptual Design Of Future Space Access Systems, Loveneesh Rana

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations

The early Conceptual Design (CD) of a Space Access System (SAS) is the most abstract, innovative, and technologically challenging phase throughout the entire aerospace product development life-cycle. While it is the most important life-cycle phase which influences around 80 percent of the overall life-cycle-cost, it is also the least understood design phase. The history of space access vehicle design provides numerous examples of projects that failed due to lack of a proper technology-hardware-mission assessment in the CD phase. The present dissertation addresses this crucial phase and develops a prototype best practice solution process to advance the current state of the …

Cockpit In The Systems Engineering Lenses, Aysen K. Taylor, Charles B. Keating, T. Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The commercial transport aircraft of today vary greatly from early aircraft in regards to how they are controlled and the feedback provided from the machine to the human operator. Automation has improved operational precision and efficiency but at the cost of providing less feedback. Pilots are the last line of defense and current technology cannot provide the human ability to solve novel problems for which no computer logic can be written. The automated cockpits of today have may sub-components that interact in a manner often opaque and unpredictable when a sensor or sub-component fails or even in situations where no …