A visualization concept for supporting module lightweight design

Abstract

In the aviation industry there is a current trend towards modular product design. As usual in aviation design, weight is a crucial factor. Hence, a modular product should not outweigh a former non modular product with an identical functionality. The modules themselves have to be very light to compensate the additional weight due to module interfaces in order to fulfill its demands. With the increasing need for a lighter design the complexity for finding weight optimization potential increases. An easily usable visualization approach for reducing the complexity of a Module Lightweight Design is presented. Adapted treemaps were identified as a suitable tool. In the following, basics of Modularization and Lightweight Design are explained and the adapted treemaps for Module Lightweight Design are discussed and applied in an example.