2020 Update on AFRL EXPEDITE Program Progress by Lockheed Martin
Clifton C. Davies, Juan Montoro · AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum · 2020
This paper provides a progress update on the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) EXPanded MDO for Effectiveness-based DesIgn TEchnologies (EXPEDITE) program, led by AFRL’s Multidisciplinary Science and Technology Center (MSTC) and performed by a multi-company team led by Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs (ADP), also known as the Skunk Works®. The EXPEDITE team has made significant progress toward achieving the program objectives of advancing the industry’s early conceptual Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design Optimization (MADO) capabilities in several key areas. These areas include advancing Effectiveness Based Design (EBD), establishing and evaluating geographically distributed computing, and utilization of High-Performance Computing (HPC). The results of this effort will establish a conceptual design framework which enables insight in how early design decisions impact aircraft operational measures of effectiveness. This framework will also establish methods for near real-time business-to-business modeling and simulation collaboration between an airframe prime contractor and key tier 1 and tier 2 sub-contractors. This paper provides an overview of the advancements made to date in many key areas and discusses plans for future work.