Abstract:
Every state-of-art aircraft has a complex distributed systems of avionics Line
Replaceable Units/Modules (LRUs/LRMs), networked by several data buses.
These LRUs are becoming more complex because of the increasing number of
new avionics functions need to be integrated in an avionics LRU. The evolution
of avionics data buses and architectures have moved from distributed analogue
and federated architecture to digital Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA). IMA
architecture allows suppliers to develop their own LRUs/LRMs capable of specific
features that can then be offered to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)
as Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products. In the meantime, the aerospace
industry has been investigating new solutions to develop smaller, lighter and
more capable avionics LRUs to be integrated into avionics architecture.
Moreover, the complexity of the overall avionics architecture and its impact on
cable length, weight, power consumption, reliability and maintainability of
avionics systems encouraged manufacturers to incorporate efficient avionics
architectures in their aircraft design process. However, manual design cannot
concurrently fulfil the complexity and interconnectivity of system requirements
and optimality. Thus, developing computer-aided design (CAD), Model Based
System Engineering (MBSE) tools and mathematical modelling for optimisation
of IMA architecture has become an active research area in avionics systems
integration.
In this thesis, a general method and tool are developed for optimisation of
avionics architecture and improving its operational capability. The tool has three
main parts including a database of avionics LRUs, mathematical modelling of the
architectures and optimisation algorithms. The developed avionics database
includes avionics LRUs with their technical specifications and operational
capabilities for each avionics function. A MCDM method, SAW, is used to quantify
and rank each avionics LRU’s operational capability. Based on the existing
avionics LRUs in the database and aircraft level avionics requirements two
avionics architectures are proposed i.e. AFCS architecture (SSA) and avionics
architecture (LSA). The proposed avionics architectures are then modelled using mathematical programming. Further, the allocation of avionics LRUs to avionics
architecture and mapping the avionics LRUs to their installation locations are
defined as an assignment problem in Integer Programming (IP) format. The
defined avionics architecture optimisation problem is to optimise avionics
architecture in terms of mass, volume, power consumption, MTBF and
operational capability. The problems are solved as both single-objective and
multi-objective optimisation using the branch-and-bound algorithm, weighted sum
method and Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm. Finally, the tool
provides a semi-automatic optimisation of avionics architecture. This helps
avionics system architects to investigate and evaluate various architectures in the
early stage of design from an LRU perspective. It can also be used to upgrade a
legacy avionics architecture.