Interactive uncertainty allocation and trade-off at early-stage aircraft computational design

A common probabilistic approach to uncertainty allocation is to assign acceptable variability in the sources of uncertainty, such that pre-specified probabilities of meeting performance constraints are satisfied. However, the computational cost of obtaining the associated trade-offs increases significantly when more sources of uncertainty and more outputs are considered. Consequently, visualizing and exploring the trade-off space becomes increasingly difficult, which, in turn, makes the decision-making process cumbersome for practicing designers. To tackle this problem, proposed is a parameterization of the input probability distribution functions, to account for several statistical moments. This, combined with efficient uncertainty propagation and inverse computation techniques, results in a computational system which performs order(s) of magnitude faster, compared with a combination of Monte Carlo Simulation and optimization techniques. Also, to aid decision-making regarding the potential combinations of uncertainty allocation, enablers for visualizing the trade space are proposed. The combined approach is demonstrated by means of a representative aircraft thermal system integration example.