The Impact of Supportability on the Economic Viability of a High Speed Civil Transport

Abstract

There is a significant investment being made within the design community developing tools identifying metrics for all considerable recyclability, etc.) of design in an attempt to bring these issues into the early stages of a design process. Additionally, within the aerospace community there has been a shift in focus from a design solely for performance to a design that emphasizes the vehicle's economic viability. This shift in focus intensified the need for an accurate cost estimation in the early stages of design. In this paper these two areas are integrated through the evaluation of the impact of supportability issues on the overall economic viability of a High Speed Civil Transport. The first step involved making modifications to an aircraft cost estimation tool called Aircraft Life Cycle Cost Analysis (ALCCA). ALCCA originally contained a module that calculates the direct cost associated with line maintenance labor, material, and burden. However, the tool did not account for the cost associated with heavy maintenance visits and supporting new technologies, nor did it account for the revenue loss associated with aircraft downtime due to both preventive as well as corrective maintenance. Modules were added to the ALCCA code which represent each of these areas of supportability concerns and, using the modified version of ALCCA, the impact of supportability for the HSCT on the overall economic viability was evaluated. The results of this analysis represent an initial step towards understanding the impact of supportability on economic viability.