Aerospace System Design

A special issue of Aerospace (ISSN 2226-4310).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2022) | Viewed by 9282

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Aerospaziale, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Turin, Italy
Interests: high-speed vehicles; on-board subsystems; environmentally sustainable systems design

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Aerospace systems are complex and highly integrated systems that require multidisciplinary design methodologies. Conflicting requirements need to be managed and balanced to optimize the design both at system and at subsystem level, considering that mutual relationships between specific technical disciplines are crucial to reach successful aerospace products. Aerospace systems range from subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic aircraft to access to space systems, satellites, and space exploration systems. Within this wide spectrum of highly sophisticated vehicles, new requirements become fundamental for future missions: environmental sustainability, reusability, flexibility, and affordability are the first examples of new constraints that designers shall comply with. How will future designs satisfy new requirements? What will be the impact of new requirements onto vehicles configurations, technologies, missions, and costs? How will design methodologies change to better represent new requirements?

Prof. Dr. Nicole Viola
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Aerospace is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • design methodologies
  • design tools
  • environmentally sustainable aircraft
  • reusable access to space vehicles
  • flexible space exploration systems

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

22 pages, 1808 KiB  
Article
An Approach to the Preliminary Sizing and Performance Assessment of Spaceplanes’ Landing Parafoils
by Jasmine Rimani, Nicole Viola and Antonio Saluzzi
Aerospace 2022, 9(12), 823; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9120823 - 14 Dec 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1919
Abstract
In this new era of space exploration, reusability and lower environmental impact are critical drivers in pursuing innovative solutions for access to space. One of these leading solutions is the Space Rider, a European reusable space plane with the ability to be both [...] Read more.
In this new era of space exploration, reusability and lower environmental impact are critical drivers in pursuing innovative solutions for access to space. One of these leading solutions is the Space Rider, a European reusable space plane with the ability to be both an “access to space” and a “return from space”. Following the lesson learned from the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) design and testing, the Space Rider will be equipped with a parafoil to enhance manoeuvrability during landing. Politecnico di Torino (PoliTO), in collaboration with Thales Alenia Space Italy (TAS-I), has developed an integrated tool to assess the landing performances of spaceplanes equipped with parafoils during conceptual design. The presented approach fuses sizing, dynamic models, guidance and control algorithms to provide a software suite for the rapid prototyping, sizing and performance assessment of spaceplanes’ parafoils. This paper details the implementation, mathematical background, validation and lessons learned behind the different software modules. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Aerospace System Design)
Show Figures

Figure 1

22 pages, 3859 KiB  
Article
A Safety-Focused System Architecting Framework for the Conceptual Design of Aircraft Systems
by Andrew K. Jeyaraj and Susan Liscouët-Hanke
Aerospace 2022, 9(12), 791; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9120791 - 3 Dec 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3062
Abstract
To reduce the environmental impact of aviation, aircraft manufacturers develop novel aircraft configurations and investigate advanced systems technologies. These new technologies are complex and characterized by electrical or hybrid-electric propulsion systems. Ensuring that these complex architectures are safe is paramount to enabling the [...] Read more.
To reduce the environmental impact of aviation, aircraft manufacturers develop novel aircraft configurations and investigate advanced systems technologies. These new technologies are complex and characterized by electrical or hybrid-electric propulsion systems. Ensuring that these complex architectures are safe is paramount to enabling the certification and entry into service of new aircraft concepts. Emerging techniques in systems architecting, such as using model-based systems engineering (MBSE), help deal with such complexity. However, MBSE techniques are currently not integrated with the overall aircraft conceptual design, using automated multidisciplinary design analysis and optimization (MDAO) techniques. Current MDAO frameworks do not incorporate the various aspects of system safety assessment. The industry is increasingly interested in Model-Based Safety Assessment (MBSA) to improve the safety assessment process and give the safety engineer detailed insight into the failure characteristics of system components. This paper presents a comprehensive framework to introduce various aspects of safety assessment in conceptual design and MDAO, also considering downstream compatibility of the system architecting and safety assessment process. The presented methodology includes specific elements of the SAE ARP4761 safety assessment process and adapts them to the systems architecting process in conceptual design. The proposed framework also introduces a novel safety-based filtering approach for large system architecture design spaces. The framework’s effectiveness is illustrated with examples from applications in recent collaborative research projects with industry and academia. The work presented in this paper contributes to increasing maturity in conceptual design studies and enables more innovation by opening the design space while considering safety upfront. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Aerospace System Design)
Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 946 KiB  
Article
Terminal Impact Angle Control Guidance Law Considering Target Observability
by Bin Li, Pan Tang, Haotian Xu and Duo Zheng
Aerospace 2022, 9(4), 193; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9040193 - 3 Apr 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2644
Abstract
The problem of the terminal impact angle control guidance law, considering the target observability for passive guidance with bearing-only measurement, is investigated in this paper. Modified line-of-sight (LOS) angle error dynamics and their closed-loop analytical solution are developed to enhance the target observability, [...] Read more.
The problem of the terminal impact angle control guidance law, considering the target observability for passive guidance with bearing-only measurement, is investigated in this paper. Modified line-of-sight (LOS) angle error dynamics and their closed-loop analytical solution are developed to enhance the target observability, and then their characteristics are studied, which makes the LOS angular rate oscillate in the early stage. The terminal impact angle control guidance law with the global sliding mode is designed to eliminate the approaching stage of sliding mode control, which makes the system robust throughout the entire process of control. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed guidance law under various conditions, which achieves the desired results. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Aerospace System Design)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop