Conceptual Design for Aeronautics Propulsion Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Conceptual design is a discipline that critically impacts the development of aeronautics propulsion systems. The reasons for this are twofold: (1) the number of design variables of new concepts keeps increasing, and (2) many factors of a different nature (industrial, economics, geopolitical, etc.) put pressure on decreasing the design time of both new and modified propulsion concepts.

In the industrial context, conceptual design helps to narrow down the space of feasible design variables to focus, at a later stage, on the most promising technical approaches. Thereby, it helps to streamline and optimize decision processes that affect significantly the viability of new propulsion systems, and also alleviates the very important question of the detailed design phase cost.

The field of conceptual design of aeronautics propulsion systems has evolved from the traditional gas path analysis to new promising formulations that involve, among many others, surrogate models, artificial intelligence algorithms, and hybrid methods. In all cases, the goal is to extract a maximum of information out of medium-/low-fidelity computations that involve low computational cost and little time.  

Nowadays, many different conceptual/mathematical techniques are being pursued with that aim. However, it is not clear whether a particular method may emerge as the preferred one or, on the contrary, the optimal conceptual design approach is problem-dependent. The present Special Issue targets the presentation, discussion, and critical evaluation of different methodologies in the field of conceptual design of aeronautics propulsion systems. It is intended that the mathematical approaches being presented are of a different nature, whether model-based, AI-based, hybrid, statistical, etc. In this way, it is expected that the specialized reader obtains a perspective that helps them to make methodological decisions regarding paths to follow in a complex design environment.

Prof. Dr. Angel Velazquez
Dr. Francisco Sastre
Guest Editors

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• conceptual design
• aeronautics propulsion systems
• methodological approaches