Design Methodology | Antonio Doral

Key Concepts

A systematic approach to product development that ensures quality, efficiency, and innovation in engineering design processes.

Rapid Parametric Iteration: The core architecture is built around a parametrised skeleton model, enabling rapid development of geometry concepts while maintaining a robust design for stable updates.

Built for the team: Developed with a logical file structure, clear naming and custom colours to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing with other engineers.

Resilience by definition: Designed using reference elements that enable modification of elements without compromising the overall design integrity.

Class A surfacing quality: Following advanced techniques to create G2 and G3 continuity in aerodynamic surfaces.

Airfoil Design Methodology

This airfoil design methodology enables the consistent creation of high quality surfaces and easy modification through a robust and parametrised design.

Airfoil Profile

Primary airfoil section used as baseline for aerodynamic elements design.

Main Profile

Tangency and Control Elements

Chord

Camber

Reference Planes

High Level of Control Through the various angle and curvature controls, the airfoil can be modified to achieve the required aerodynamic characteristics.

Robust DesignThe strategic use of reference elements enables a robust and fast modification process.

CAD Elements Knowledge The design takes into consideration the intricacies of each type of element to provide a robust design. Use of Extremums and on curve/on plane points rather than relying on the fictitious points created at the end of the lines. Use of tangencies for maximum quality and continuity while maintaining surface quality.

Manufacturing and Testing Focus Taking into account manufacturing limits, like the width of the trailing edge, with enough margin for model making at scale for wind tunnel testing. This aims to increase the correlation between designed parts, tested parts in the wind tunnel and manufactured parts.

3D Wing Design

The methodology can be applied to high-quality complex surface design.

Wing Profile

Primary wing section used as baseline for 3D elements design.

Main Profile

Tangency and Control Elements

Chord

Camber

Reference Planes

Guide Lines Planes

Precise Control Every Spline is carefully controlled through tangent lines and parameters.

Robust DesignThe strategic use of reference elements maintains the robust design of the airfoil.

Combined 3D Guides The guide lines are created with the Combine tool that allows to combine two splines for advanced 3D control of the final Surface.

Class A Surfaces The design adheres to Class A surface standards ensuring G2 continuity throughout the entire wing structure and enabling complex surfaces to be easily modified maintaining quality.

Surface Detail

Detailed view of the wing surface and the tangent surface, used to maintain the high quality connectivity to the input structure and enable seamless symmetry creation.

CAD File Structure

A clear, consistent file and model structure reduces rework and speeds collaboration.

Project CAD Structure

Main structure

The main structure is composed of three main folders that help organize the elements and enable fast knowledge transfer to other engineers of the team.

Input: Input geometry is located in this folder to facilitate bounding boxes, tangencies and requirements of the new design.
Construction: Main folder where the designed elements are located.
Output: Final surfaces ready to be linked and assembled where needed.

Second Layer

Inside each main folder, the elements are divided to maintain a consistent structure and facilitate collaboration.

Wireframe: Contains the reference geometry and the basic wireframe of the design.
Guides: Guide curves used to design complex surfaces.
Surfaces: Surfaces created from the wireframe and guides.

Color Code and Naming conventions

Each type of element has a different color and style to for rapid visual differentiation in the design and the navigation tree.

parametrised Design

The most important characteristics of the design are parametrised and implemented through formulas to increase modification and iteration speed and robustness.

Legality and Quality Assurance

Ensuring designs meet regulatory requirements while maintaining the highest standards of surface quality through the Porcupine and conectivity analysis.

Regulatory Detail

Procupine analysis used in the airfoil section to evaluate the quality of the section. The continuity showed by the tool ensures a high quality section with consistent curvature and tangencies.

Class-A surfacing

The design adheres to Class A surface standards ensuring a minimum of G2 continuity and G3 when needed.

G0: Positional continuity, ensures there are no gaps between surfaces.
G1: Tangent continuity, ensures surfaces are smoothly connected and share the same tangent angle at the connection point.
G2: Curvature continuity, ensures the curvature of surfaces is continuous at the connection points.
G3: Acceleration continuity, ensures the rate of change of curvature is the same at the connection points.

Porcupine Analysis

This tool is used to assess the quality of a surface through its sections. It provides insights into the continuity of the section.

Legality check

The Porcupine analysis can be used to control the minimum or maximum radius that is usually stated in the technical regulations. Advanced macros can be used to automatically check for regulatory compliance like the number of sections available in a plane or the containment inside boundary boxes.

Manufacturing standards

These quality checks can also be applied to the manufacturing process to ensure that the final product meets the desired specifications and quality levels as well as check for manufacturing limits like curvature radious or minimum surface width.