PhD Studentship: Applied Value Driven Design Integrated with Aero-Engine Geometry

The design and manufacture of aero-engines, which typically have lead times that can be measured in decades, are typically deemed successful if they meet all of the stated requirements, including performance, capability, and economic goals. However, the true measure of a product’s success ultimately depends on how much “value” is provided to the customers by the product throughout its entire life cycle. Often mistaken for lowest cost, true value is actually a complex combination of product attributes that includes performance, capability, and indeed cost, but also encompasses qualitative characteristics, such as sustainability, customer loyalty, market competitiveness, perceived quality and subjective/objective customer experience when the product is operational. Therefore, the aerospace sector is shifting the design emphasis from ‘design for performance’ to ‘design for value’. This paradigm shift has been characterized through the establishment of Value Driven Design (VDD). The VDD formulation brings together and integrates disparate information from all aspects of the product design. This results in robust, comprehensive and justifiable decision making throughout the entire product life cycle.  

Rolls-Royce needs to represent value of different design alternatives that are increasingly becoming more complex involving multiple companies. More electric engine and aircraft concepts are considered within the aerospace sector and VDD offers a tangible model to capture an objective metric for design alternatives. This research will look at the VDD and how to apply it to the preliminary design process - specifically considering how to link VDD models to geometry.  

Issues that have been identified for this research to consider are: the lack of suitable geometry at early stages, how does/can geometry integrate with VDD models, and how does ambiguity at early stages effect the input to VDD and therefore aid the decision process.  

This project is run through participation in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Computational Modelling (http://ngcm.soton.ac.uk). For details of our 4 Year PhD programme, please see http://www.findaphd.com/search/PhDDetails.aspx?CAID=331&LID=2652 

 For a details of available projects click here http://www.ngcm.soton.ac.uk/projects/index.html