Problem: In aircraft cabin development, not only variant management for developing modular product architectures is important, but also the design of lightweight optimized structures. These two areas have the contrary objectives of standardization and commonality on the one hand, and differentiation and reduction of oversizing on the other. To deal with these two opposites, a methodical approach to modular lightweight design has already been developed. Thus, the two disciplines can be linked, in order to develop a modular hybrid design that takes the advantages of both fields into account. As with other product development methods, different types of process and product data, which can also change over time, are used. In this context, versioning of unlinked process steps can lead to inconsistencies and affect temporal traceability as well as the traceability between models.Especially in aircraft cabin development, the processes are often not documented in a development-oriented manner and existing information are stored inconsistently. The modular lightweight design is in particular characterized by iterations as well as the use of different product data from the two opposing disciplines. Especially as the data continuity over the different models (CAD, FEM, …) and methodical tools is not given. This paper addresses, how there is no given temporal data continuity within many development processes like the modular lightweight design, as the single process steps use different kind of documents, models and data elements. Additionally, these are not linked to each other and often do not support proper versioning within the development.Research questions: How can methodical development be implemented and modeled in such a manner, that the overall data-consistency can be improved and versioning made possible? How can this be realized in a software-based approach to support data-driven methodical procedures such as modular lightweight design?Approach: The main proposal presented in this paper is, to show how the potential of a model-based approach can be utilized as a first methodical step to consistently link the product and process data of methods. To establish this within the method of the modular lightweight design, the six main steps were analyzed with regards to possible inconsistencies and links. The core-steps for module-boundary definition were particularized to allow for the link of the process to the product model. As part of this particularization the essential tasks of this core-steps were methodically documented using visualization-tools of the methodical product development to allow for a simple overview of the relevant information. In this context, it is particularly important which input and which output data are required or generated in each of these steps. Using this information, the link to between the process and product data models can be established. With this link, the consistency of the data can be improved, as uses and changes in one step can be traced to other relevant steps. Because the data itself now is more consistent, the steps and the method itself boast a better consistency.&nbsp;Results and Discussion: To resolve the presented challenges the approaches and tools of Model-Based Systems Engineering can be used. A SysML-model is presented, with which the product data model can be consistently linked with the process data model, based on a data tree. This integrated process and product data model is applied to aircraft cabin development to develop a continuous, consistent models in a methodical manner.As shown with the aircraft cabin, modular lightweight design can now be implemented consistently and the iterative character can be mapped in a target-oriented manner in order to solve the contradiction between lightweight design and modularization. The challenges of data management in aviation are addressed by the model-based solution and evolved from a document-centric to a model-based product development. In particular, the dynamic change of data within the methodical development process can be handled.Based on this, the version management of methods can be supported in a model-based way. Prospectively, aspects of sustainability, digitalization and aircraft cabin retrofits may be added.

Methodical Modeling of Product and Process Data of Design Methods Using the Example of Modular Lightweight Design Modeling of Product and Process Data of Design Methods Using the Example of Modular Lightweight Design

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.