Method to assess commercial aircraft technologies

Increasing competition in the commercial aircraft industry requires that ai rframe manufacturers be judicious with technology research and development efforts. Currently, technology development strategies for commercial aircra ft appear to be lacking; a methodology is presented to assess new technolog ies in terms of both cost and performance. This methodology encompasses tec hnologies that can be applied to the aircraft design and technologies that improve the development, manufacturing, and testing of the aircraft. This d iffers from past studies that focused on a small number of performance-base d technologies. The method is divided into two phases. The first phase eval uates technologies based on cost measures alone. The second phase redesigns an aircraft with new technologies, assesses the relative importance of per formance-based technologies, and recognizes technology interactions using T aguchi's design of experiments. For a wide-body transport aircraft example, the methodology identifies promising technologies for further study. Recom mendations and conclusions about the methodology are made based on the resu lts.