Systems Engineering Approach in Aircraft Design Education: Techniques and Challenges

Aircraft design is primarily an analytical process; and essentially contains its own body of knowledge that is independent of the science-based analysis tools. The world of aircraft design involves many challenges and uncertainties. The traditional engineering education is structured to emphasize on mathematics, physical, sciences, and engineering sciences. This paper presents the systems engineering approach in aircraft design education. The approach opens a new horizon to aerospace engineering students and excites them to embrace the new challenges. Throughout this approach, various techniques for generating creative design alternatives are introduced. The nature of aircraft design project; complexity, multidisciplinary, and various constraints; suggests that the systems engineering approach to be the best candidate. The implementation of systems engineering requires a flawless interface between team members working toward a common system thinking to correctly execute the design process. The focus of this paper would be very much on techniques and challenges on curricular structures, course design, implementation; assessment and evaluation.