Minimum required inputs for sizing and aircraft and running a mission

[emski0]

Hi,
Is there somewhere the minimum required inputs for FLOPS and GASPS, for sizing an aircraft and running a mission?
I haven't seen it anywhere, if so i think a list with the minimum required inputs could be quite helpful.
Thanks

[Kenneth-T-Moore]

Hey, emski. I have experimented with a minimal FLOPS aircraft, just to see how much I could shrink the aircraft definition. To do this, I added the empty mass as aircraft:design:empty_mass,91530.52715913,lbm. This means that all of the inputs that eventually contribute to the empty weight can be zeroed out, though in practice, I needed to keep some of them to prevent divide by zero errors (hydraulic system pressure was an example of this).

https://gist.github.com/Kenneth-T-Moore/7160ec8a176eb0b70c6c3a77be3b5318

I do think we need to make this easier, so that the user isn't forced to carry along legacy inputs that aren't part of their aicraft description.

[jkirk5]

I think we could further shrink that list and remove variables that use the default values (like num_fuselages, num_fuselage_engines, and the flight idle fraction vars. Someday we hope to have a utility that can create a list of required vars for a given Aviary problem setup (given things like which methods you are using for each subsystem, equations of motion, etc.)

[OscarEspinosaBarcenas]

Hello everyone.

Are any updates on this topic?

Would it be possible to keep levels of abstraction in the parameter definitions?

For example, the first layer could model the aircraft as a point mass using parameters such as EMPTY_MASS, TOTAL_PAYLOAD_MASS, and Aircraft.Fuel.TOTAL_CAPACITY (maybe, rename it to TOTAL_FUEL_CAPACITY would be better) as the first abstraction layer.

The second layer could include the weight of major components, such as the wing, fuselage, tail, and propulsion system.

The third layer could specify the mass of detailed components, such as air conditioning, hydraulic systems, and individual propulsion parts.

Also, is this parameter list still relevant? (https://gist.github.com/Kenneth-T-Moore/7160ec8a176eb0b70c6c3a77be3b5318) still relevant?

Thanks!

[jkirk5]

We actually have some progress as of this week - there is a new aircraft model that has a minimum required input set that gives a reasonable (i.e. physically plausible) aircraft for a FLOPS-based sizing, energy-state mission. A future possibility is a GUI that can show you which inputs are required for a given combination of methods, although that is a longer-term goal.