Techmaps – Technology Management for the architecting process of aircraft on-board systems

Due to the noticeable effects of climate change and defined emission reduction targets, such as FlightPath 2050, efforts are being made to achieve low-emission aircraft in the near future. Therefore, many propulsion and on-board systems technologies, such as hydrogen-powered fuel cells, are being investigated. However, due to the vast number of existing and emerging technologies, it is challenging to navigate and manage technology knowledge. Hence, during the aircraft conceptual design phase, providing support to the engineers is crucial as they explore this vast design space of technologies and need to choose among many different technology variants. To handle this complex problem and to navigate the technology variants, this paper presents the Technology Management for Architecting Process of on-board Systems (TechMAPS) method. It is used to navigate and manage available and emerging technologies. Moreover, the method supports the conservation and provision of technology knowledge in a standardized and formalized way. To this end, TechMAPS consists of three parts: a technology radar to identify emerging technologies, a database to enable knowledge conservation and query capabilities, and an automated report generation with so-called technology fact sheets to provide the data to the engineer. In addition, intellectual property and confidential data handling are included.TechMAPS is exemplarily applied to a fuel cell, an existing electric motor, and battery technologies to demonstrate the method’s capabilities for different systems and different technology abstraction levels. The study highlights the effectiveness of TechMAPS for technology management but also outlines aspects, which need further research, such as creating an automated and standardized interface to and from the database.

Subjects

aircraft

knowledge management

systems architecting

technology navigator

technology radar

DDC Class

629.13: Aviation Engineering

600: Technology

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Techmaps – Technology Management for the architecting process of aircraft on-board systems