UNICADO – an Academic Conceptual Aircraft Design Environment for Research and Education
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The paramount goal of aviation until 2050 is a substantial reduction of climate impact. Any amount of saved energy contributes directly to this. However, reducing the energy demand of air transport also helps closing the business case for costly alternative energy carriers, such as liquid hydrogen or sustainable aviation fuels. Due to these changed boundary conditions, it is reasonable to open and explore the full aircraft design space within research and development. This requires specific skills and expertise and an approach different from current incremental development path. Thus, the future generation of engineers needs accordingly to be prepared and trained. This was the major trigger to start an academic initiative on national level in Germany, with all universities active in the field of aircraft design (RWTH Aachen, TU Berlin, TU Braunschweig, TU Hamburg, TU Munich, Univ. Stuttgart) joining the project UNICADO (UNIversity Conceptual Aircraft Design and Optimization). The final paper will highlight two aspects: 1) UNICADO is intended to be continuously enhanced and maintained over the years and it will be published as open source under GNU General Public License in order to enable a broader community to contribute. Therefore, strict processes for modularization and (automatic) testing are applied. 2) UNICADO is introduced as design tool in aircraft design classes within the participating universities. In addition, specific aircraft design labs for concurrent design work will be established in each location. This allows to offer inter-university classes and student design competitions.
