Propulsion Rapid Architecture Synthesis and Evaluation (PARSE)

Engineering of the next generation of aerospace systems will require investigation into novel propulsion architectures that are designed with consideration of the power and thermal management systems.This will require exploration of the early stage design trade space with hundreds of factors and millions of possible architectures.To enable rapid exploration of this space, PC Krause and Associates (PCKA) proposes to fully realize the Propulsion Architecture Rapid Synthesis and Evaluation (PARSE) tool.The PARSE tool will 1) automatically synthesize propulsion architectures, 2) evaluate performance of candidate architectures, and 3) search the design space of potential architectures to identify the optimal architecture for a given mission and set of constraints.The PARSE tool uses a 2 stage co-design process which optimizes both the architecture performance and architecture design.The advantage of this methodology is that it enables the comparison of different architectures on the basis of their best case performance.This effort will expand on the prototype PARSE tool addressing critical gaps in modeling capability and numerical scalability.Through this effort, the PARSE tool will also be applied to real design challenges of importance to the Air Force and industry.