An Investigation of a Relational Database Approach to a Multidisciplinary Conceptual Design for the HSCT Reference Hall, N. and Fulton, R.E., proceedings of ASME Engineering Database Symposium, CIE Conference, August 18-22, 1996, Irvine, California. Abstract New aerospace designs will incorporate new concepts as a result of advances made in the scientific and engineering technologies. These new concepts will afford the aircraft designer with an interesting and somewhat envious dilemma. The aircraft designer will have unprecedented flexibility in design concepts. However, this new flexibility will often be paralleled in ever increasing design complexity. Aircraft such as the High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) will provide a design environment which will require the efficient use of new technologies in an arena which has historically proven to have stringent performance and cost goals which must be met in order to result in a successful design. The complexity of the HSCT design will dictate a close multidisciplinary effort requiring large amounts of data exchange. Moreover, with the enormous development costs associated with such a design, corporate teaming is essential. It is critical to the success of the HSCT and future aircraft design that a new approach be taken toward the management and exchange of information. A top-down data management design structure should be developed and implemented in the early stages in order to optimize the design process. A small scale multidisciplinary relational database management design has been developed for the HSCT in order to gain a better understanding of how efficient data management can optimize the aircraft design process. Documents Manuscript: pdf