Reference no: EM132473899

EN3300 ACE Project - Optimisation of Aircraft Structures

Find the Optimisation of the Aircraft Structures.

Project Summary - Minimum mass design of aerospace structures reduces the cost of materials and manufacturing. More significantly, it reduces the fuel consumption and environmental impact of the aircraft. Modern aircraft make increasing use of advanced lightweight materials such as carbon-fibre composites, which can be tailored to specific loading requirements. Optimum design therefore involves the adjustment of many more design variables than for metal structures and, even with today's computers, computation times for the underlying analysis can be prohibitive. So there is a need for reliable, efficient, approximate methods so that designers can quickly explore alternative configurations before carrying out more detailed analysis on the most promising ones.

The students carrying out this project will work with special purpose analysis software (VICONOPT) which has been developed through collaboration with NASA and Airbus. Starting with measurements from a real aircraft wing panel, attempts will be made to reduce the mass by altering the geometry of the cross-section, e.g. by varying the number and type of longitudinal stiffeners.

Another topic to be explored is the optimisation of the stacking sequences in a composite structure using lamination parameters to represent the stiffness properties of each component plate. A two-stage process is envisaged, in which (1) VICONOPT is used to find optimal values of the lamination parameters, and (2) a stacking sequence which matches these optimal values is chosen using a locally written MATLAB program. Alternative solution strategies will be explored in order to reduce the computation time for large problems.

PROJECT REQUIREMENTS: It is vital that instrumentation, experimental equipment, computer software etc, be functional at the start of the project. Please indicate your requirements as follows:- equipment service/repair calibration etc.

The project will use our specialist software VICONOPT which finds buckling loads and natural frequencies of plate structures, and can also design them by minimising the mass subject to buckling constraints. When we use laminated composite materials such as the carbon-fibre composites that are used in modern aircraft wings, we need to design the layup of each individual plate. This is a two-stage process, firstly using VICONOPT to optimise the stiffness properties, and then using a logic-based optimiser to find a layup with the optimal stiffness properties. Look at the stiffeners that run along the length of the wing, answering questions such as: What shape are they? What are the sizes of the webs and flanges? How thick is each piece of metal? How might the wing be designed using lightweight carbon-fibre composite material? We will also need to think about what loads (or combination of loads) need to be considered in the design.

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