Dynamic aeroelastic optimization of composite wings including fatigue considerations

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the aviation industry with more than 60% reduction in the passenger traffic in the year 2020 compared to year 2019. The passenger traffic which is now expected to reach the 2019 level only around the year 2024 will still continue to grow but at a lower pace compared to the pre pandemic levels. The environmental issues which were a major concern for the aviation industry before pandemic will still be relevant. The objective of achieving an environmentally friendly zero emission aircraft will not be met only with alternative fuels and propulsion concepts but also require advanced material technologies and novel designs. A promising technology having the potential to improve the performance of an aircraft by improving the structural efficiency is the application of aeroelastic tailoring with the help of composite materials. However, incorporating aeroelastic tailoring with composite materials in the design process is not a trivial task. In the traditional design process, knowledge about the design increases, while the design freedom decreases as one goes from conceptual to preliminary and finally to the detailed design. For conventional designs, the lack of knowledge during the initial stages is compensated through empirical knowledge. However, the lack of such empirical knowledge for novel design and advanced technology, results in the need for increased physics-based knowledge during the initial design process. In the research presented in this dissertation, the focus was on increasing knowledge in the early stages of the aeroelastic design process of a composite wing. As current state of art in aeroelastic tailoring does not include critical gust and fatigue loads, this thesis is focused on including critical gust loads and fatigue loading requirements in the preliminary aeroelastic optimization framework…