Μεθοδολογία ανάλυσης και προκαταρκτικού σχεδιασμού μη-συμβατικών αεροναυπηγικών δομών

Abstract

The design and development of a modern aerospace structure consists of many design stages. The most important stages are the conceptual and the preliminary where the initial sizing of the structure is obtained. It is known that the conventional design of the aircraft’s main structural members has reached a high optimization level, where margins for further improvement are small. The current demands of the lightweight structures such as weight reduction, payload increase etc. have led the aerospace industries develop unconventional structures and partially substitute the metallic materials of the primary structures with composites. The current trend of designing and evolving unconventional aerospace structures, without performing extended experimental tests, leads to the development of behavior models. The simulation of the experimental tests (through the behavior models) is achieved using high performance computers and numerical methods (Finite Element Method, Boundary Element Method etc). To apply simulation methods during the conceptual and preliminary stage is not an easy task. Most of the difficulties are the numerous geometrical, material parameters and the structural details that alter during the iterative process of the design. So, the exclusive usage of numerical analysis methods becomes very time consuming, if it is not accompanied by analytical or semi analytical methods of the sub-problems of the design. Part of the preliminary design of an unconventional wing structure is to prevent upper skin from failure. The stiffened panels that comprise the upper skin of the wing suffer from buckling due to the applied compressive loads. The sizing of the composite stiffened panels usually requires numerous of iterative calculations for various geometries, loading and boundary conditions etc. The examination of each case separately, with the use of numerical methods, results to time consuming analyses of the entire structure. Therefore, the development of appropriate analytical or semi analytical methods for estimating stiffened panels’ critical buckling load is of great importance. For this purpose, in the present thesis, analytical and semi analytical methodologies are developed for estimating the critical buckling load of stiffened panels. The developed methodologies are incorporated as design criteria in the sizing routine of the entire structure. The sizing routine comprises additional sizing criteria for checking the strength of wing’s structural members at each phase of the iterative process. Applying the developed sizing routine in various wing configurations made of composite materials, multispar wing designs are studied. Specifically, analytical and semi analytical methods for global and local buckling problems of stiffened panels are developed. The methodology of global buckling problems is based on the mathematical conversion of a stiffened panel to an equivalent homogeneous panel. The developed method of homogenization of stiffened panels appears to have significant advantages over the already existed homogenization methods. Additionally, the energy method Rayleigh-Ritz is applied for solving global buckling problems of stiffened panels with partial anisotropy considering discrete stiffeners. Regarding local buckling problems of stiffened panels, a new methodology is developed for estimating the critical local buckling load with the use of energy methods. The approach considers the stiffened panel segment located between two stiffeners, while the remaining panel is replaced by equivalent transverse and rotational springs of varying stiffness, which act as elastic edge supports. The buckling analysis of the segment provides an accurate and conservative prediction of the panel local buckling behavior. Consequently, the developed methodology is extended in the prediction of post-buckling response of stiffened panels where skin has undergone local buckling. The developed methodologies for calculating the critical buckling load are applied for sizing the wing members of an unconventional wing (multispar configuration) from composite materials. An efficient methodology based on fast Finite Element (FE) stress analysis combined to analytically formulated design criteria is presented for the initial sizing of a large scale composite component. A detailed comparison between optimized designs of conventional (2-spar) and three alternative wing configurations which comprise 4-, 5-, and 6-spars for the wing construction is performed. In order to understand the effect of different material properties, as well as the variation of maximum strain level allowed in the total wing mass, parametric analyses are performed for all wing configurations considered. It arises that under certain conditions the multispar configuration demonstrates significant advantages over the conventional design. This would lead to a mass reduction of 12%.