Aircraft Design by Scholz : adopted at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and beyond

Abstract

Purpose – Presenting an overview of my (Prof. Dr. Scholz) aircraft design teaching and research. --- Methodology – A review of lecture notes, short course notes, and guided research of students up to PhD-level. --- Findings – Aircraft design teaching by Scholz follows 16 steps in a systematic way, starting with requirements (Step 1) and ending with a three-view drawing or a 3D model of the aircraft (Step 16). Central is Step 5 (preliminary sizing) based on Loftin (1980), making use of a 2D manual optimization. Conceptual design provides the details of cabin and fuselage design (Step 6), wing design (Step 7), design for high-lift (Step 8), empennage design (Step 9 and 11), mass estimation (Step 10), landing gear design (Step 12), drag estimation (Step13), aircraft performance checks (Step 14), design evaluation mainly based on Direct Operating Costs (DOC, Step 15) The method has been adopted at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and at other universities in Germany. --- Limitations – This presentation gives only an overview of methods and tools. For details, the aircraft design lecture notes, supporting documents, and tools may be consulted as referenced. --- Practical implications – The overview may prevent getting lost in the details of the aircraft design method. --- Originality – For the first time "the method" is clearly linked to the name of the author.