Collaborative complex system design applied to an aircraft system

Aircraft systems have evolved dramatically since the beginning of aviation. Many improvements of performance and safety have been made. Now each sub-system has optimized performance and it is thus difficult to find gains without breakthroughs in architectures or technologies; and this is the objective of the R & D studies towards a more electric aircraft. Simulations are widely used to explore and justify aircraft architectures [1], but system simulations currently suffer from limitations which make them difficult to use for complex multi-systems analysis. Therefore tools and processes must evolve to accompany these major changes in order to support the designers in their quest of optimized design. This article deals with new processes and tools which will take part, in a close future, in the determination, the verification and validation of systems architectures. The results presented here were obtained during the CSDL project (Complex Systems Design Lab) partly funded by the French government.