Automated generation of aircraft on-board system architectures and filtering through certification specification requirements

Abstract On-board systems represent an important part of an aircraft having a noticeable impact on mass and fuel consumption, among others. New innovative systems might increase the performance of the new generation of aircraft. Aircraft on-board system architectures are defined by the different subsystems, components and connections among them. The big amount of possible combinations usually creates a huge architectural design space that requires automation in order to be properly explored. Certification aspects can be used as a filter in early design stages of on-board systems, this allows to discard some architectures if they are not compliant with the certification specifications. The discarded architectures do not need to be sized and calculated, saving computational time. The proposed methodology shows how to create this link between on-board system architectures generation and certification rules. Results show an application case regarding the modelling of a flight spoiler system. Several architectures are automatically generated from the design space and then automatically filtered by the certification specification rules. This achieves a preliminary certification of innovative on-board system architectures and allows certification aspects to also drive the design process.