Development and implementation of algorithms for the design and installation of avionics systems for commercial aircraft in an MDO framework.

Aircraft design is a complex process that requires the knowledge and skills of multiple disciplines to be combined in order to ultimately obtain a product that meets the specific requirements of a potential customer. However, as these disciplines are often in conflict with each other, compromises must be made in order to identify the best solution globally. Furthermore, an equally important factor in the success of the project is related to the competitiveness of the designed product with respect to the ones from the other manufacturers: compatibly with environmental and safety constraints, time-to-market and development costs need to be reduced, avoiding above all risks related to mistaken design solutions. For this reason, in the last years, have become central the role of collaborative Multidisciplinary Design Optimization frameworks, as in the case of the EU project AGILE, in which the Politecnico di Torino participates by providing the design of the on-board systems with its ASTRID (Aircraft On Board Systems Sizing and Trade-Off Analysis in Initial Design) tool. In this context, the purpose of this thesis is to optimize the avionics systems module of the tool by implementing algorithms that automatize the dimensioning and installation processes. Starting from the analysis of the basic functions and investigating the avionics architectures of several aircraft, avionics suites and equipment positioning models have been defined, calibrated and selectable according to the aircraft type.