AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE AT POLITECNICO DI TORINO TO STATE AND INCREASE CAPABILITY IN AIRCRAFT LAYOUT COMPREHENSION AND DEFINITION

Aim of this paper is to present a recent experience about education of Aircraft Engineers to a very peculiar aspect that is the Airplane lay-out definition, in order to acquire at first a global vision of the plane, the capability to operate in lay-out definition and to be conscious of such context, clearly interfaced with all other design activities. At first it is pointed out how relevant and essential is the Aircraft Design Education in a wider Aircraft Engineering Education context. Then it is discussed how Design is comprehensive of both Quantitative and Qualitative definitions, pointing out as Qualitative definitions, like Airplane Layout (at Subsystems level the “block scheme” too) are extremely relevant but very difficult to be driven up. So, an idea to start to educate young Engineers (in particular PhD Students) has been developed and, for the first issue, recently held at our Politecnico. The organisation and the program of the course are described, with deep attention to peculiar topics or practical exercises considered particularly useful to reach the educational objectives. In such a way a sort of logical guideline to start sketch initial layout is acquired by Students. It is relevant how the undeniable interest, that historic airplane release can be a powerful mean to push Students to try to understand architectures and, eventually, to elaborate new solutions