A systematic approach towards the integration of initial airworthiness regulatory requirements in remotely piloted aircraft system conceptual design methodologies

Date published

2024-09-07

Free to read from

2024-10-14

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Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

MDPI

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Article

ISSN

2226-4310

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Citation

Gómez-Rodríguez Á, Turkoglu C, Cuerno-Rejado C. (2024) A systematic approach towards the integration of initial airworthiness regulatory requirements in remotely piloted aircraft system conceptual design methodologies. Aerospace, Volume 11, Issue 9, September 2024, pp. 735-735

Abstract

The regulatory framework of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPASs) has recently experienced an extraordinary evolution. This article seeks to improve the integration of certification considerations in RPAS conceptual design approaches so as to enhance the safety, certifiability and competitiveness of their resulting designs. The first part of the research conducts a two-stage analysis of contemporary regulations related to an RPAS’s initial airworthiness. In the first stage, the broad international regulation paradigm is evaluated attending to a set of criteria that are tightly related to both airworthiness and design considerations. The second stage keeps the most promising documents from a design–integration standpoint, which are assessed according to their applicability considering both design and operational aspects. The results of this analysis provide insights regarding the main issues in airworthiness design criteria extraction and integration in design methodologies. To aid the designer in surmounting these challenges, a flexible procedure named DECEX is developed. Considering the documents and findings from the survey, and attending to the scope of the design methodology being developed, it aids in establishing a complete regulatory document corpus and in comparing and extracting the applicable airworthiness design criteria. Two case studies for different RPAS types are conducted to demonstrate its application.

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Github

Keywords

40 Engineering, 4001 Aerospace Engineering, 4001 Aerospace engineering

DOI

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Attribution 4.0 International

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Funder/s

This research is the result of an international research stay of Álvaro Gómez-Rodríguez at Cranfield University. This international stay was funded by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and Santander Universidades through the UPM’s predoctoral research stay programme, grant reference: VMOVILIDAD23AGR, and concept: 2784885—V CRANFIELD