Optimization of airplane wing structures under gust loads

Abstract

A methodology is presented for the optimum design of aircraft wing structures subjected to gust loads. The equations of motion, in the form of coupled integro-differential equations, are solved numerically and the stresses in the aircraft wing structure are found for a discrete gust encounter. The gust is assumed to be one minus cosine type and uniform along the span of the wing. In order to find the behavior of the wing structure under gust loads and also to obtain a physical insight into the nature of the optimum solution, the design of the typical section (symmetric double wedge airfoil) is studied by using a graphical procedure. Then a more realistic wing optimization problem is formulated as a constrained nonlinear programming problem based on finite element modeling and the optimum solution is found by using the interior penalty function method. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to find the effects of changes in design variables about the optimum point on the response quantities of the wing structure.