Abstract
The aviation industry is committed to curbing its emissions with ambitious targets by 2050; however, the improvement of aircraft and engine efficiency and the use of alternative fuels are unlikely to be sufficient to meet the targets. Novel aircraft designs are needed, but the state of modern aircraft development does not readily encourage radical innovations and instead revolves around incremental innovations of a matured design architecture. This thesis addresses the question of what the opportunities are for improvements in the current aircraft design methodologies to facilitate novel aircraft concept generation and how engineers in the aviation industry can generate more novel aircraft concepts. Through a literature review of methodologies in aircraft design and certification, the thesis identifies the need to better support novel concept generation by integrating methods for creative ideation and infusing external design knowledge. Furthermore, the thesis identifies that technological and certification uncertainties are impediments to novel concept generation and that the capability to manage these uncertainties is needed. Further literature review in the domains of systematic innovation, design creativity, decision science and engineering, knowledge management, safety management, and risk management identifies methods and tools that form a set of recommendations for an aircraft design framework enabling novel aircraft concepts.
A Novelty-focused Aircraft Concept Design Framework (NOVAC) is developed from the findings of the literature reviews as a proposed means for engineers in the aviation industry to generate more novel aircraft concepts. The effectiveness of NOVAC in terms of usefulness and usability is evaluated through a formative assessment and correlational study with aeronautical engineers working at an aircraft design and manufacturing company. The study suggests that NOVAC can be useful in generating novel aircraft concepts, though the methods and tools could be further improved for usability. While the thesis has focused on the aviation industry, it is believed that there is potential for NOVAC to be further generalized or adapted to other industries that are at a similar point in the industrial lifecycle of product development to advance their innovations.