Weight trades in the design of a composite wing box

Weight trades in the design of a composite wing box: Effect of various design choices

Moors, Gunther (Student TU Delft)
Kassapoglou, C. (TU Delft Aerospace Structures & Computational Mechanics)
de Almeida, Sergio Frascino Müller (Universidade de São Paulo)
Ferreira, Clovis Augusto Eça (EMBRAER)

2019

A process to efficiently design composite wing boxes is presented. It uses analytical and semi-empirical equations for failure modes such as material strength, plate buckling, stiffener column buckling and stiffener flange or web crippling. Laminate layups for the different components are selected in accordance with basic engineering rules and guidelines and are updated as necessary to meet the local loads. The emphasis is in allowing buckling of skins at any fraction of the ultimate load and allowing local load redistribution from buckled to non-buckled panels to save weight. The design process is automated and the design can be automatically transferred over to a commercial finite-element code for detailed design and validation. The effects on weight of number of spars, ribs, and stiffeners as well as the fraction of ultimate load at which buckling is allowed are examined and insight is gained to which of these the weight is most sensitive to. In addition, the effect of minimum gage on weight was found to be a driver.

Aircraft design
Buckling
Composite structures
Composite wing-box design
Mass/weight estimation
Post-buckling
Skin buckling
Stiffener buckling
Trade studies

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:13b722ef-0eb4-419e-82d8-73ab01dae16a

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13272-018-0321-4

1869-5582

CEAS Aeronautical Journal, 10 (2), 403-417

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2019 Gunther Moors, C. Kassapoglou, Sergio Frascino Müller de Almeida, Clovis Augusto Eça Ferreira