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This paper will introduce the concept of Concept and Concurrent Analysis and Optimization (CCAp for short), and discuss its merits and challenges for its successful application, from a technical perspective. Increasingly strong emphasis have been placed upon integrating analysis and optimization into a product design and development process (PD&D for short) for shorter time-to-market, lower cost, and increased quality and reliability. However, its effect and influence are ultimately limited in scope and extent to downstream from its entry into the process. CCAp promotes early introduction (at and before concept) and continued application (concurrent) along design evolution paths in a process. Concepts, which exist at all levels and on all scales throughout an entire process, are when design changes and variations are the easiest and least expensive to make, and when optimizations are the least constrained and the most effective.

The modal-scaling technique is just a treatment of normal mode results to find stresses in an object responding in its global modes under given boundary and input environment. It takes the stresses from a normal mode run and scales them according to reaction forces either measured in testing or obtained otherwise at the boundaries. This technique is a better alternative and supplement to the traditional quasi-static g loading technique in two aspects. It finds stresses in actual global response modes, while the quasi-static g loading technique finds stresses in approximated global response modes simulated by applying a uniform g loading throughout the object. Additionally, it can find stresses beyond the three principal global response modes (roll, pitch, and bounce) that the quasi-static g loading technique is typically not capable of.