Abstract
In the pursuit of a lighter composite wing design, fast and effective methodologies for sizing and validating the wing members (e.g., spar, ribs, skins, etc.) are required. In the present paper, the preliminary design methodology of an airliner main composite wing, which has an innovative multispar configuration instead of the conventional two-spar design, is investigated. The investigated aircraft wing is a large-scale composite component, requiring an efficient analysis methodology; for this purpose, the initial wing sizing is mostly based on simplified Finite Element (FE) stress analysis combined to analytically formulated design criteria. The proposed methodology comprises three basic modules, namely, computational stress analysis of the wing structure, comparison of the stress–strain results to specific design allowable and a suitable resizing procedure, until all design requirements are satisfied. The design constraints include strain allowable for the entire wing structure, stability constraints for the upper skin and spar webs, as well as bearing bypass analysis of the riveted/bolted joints of the spar flanges/skins connection. A comparison between a conventional (2-spar) and an innovative 4-spar wing configuration is presented. It arises from the comparison between the conventional and the 4-spar wing arrangement, that under certain conditions the multispar configuration has significant advantages over the conventional design.
Highlights
The application of composite materials in primary aeronautical structures is progressively increasing, e.g., about 25% of the AIRBUS A380 aircraft (A380 Innovation: https://www.airbus.com/aircraft/passenger-aircraft/a380/innovation.html#materials) is produced of composites, while the aircraft generation is expected to have about 50% of composite materials on its structure
The increase of the computer power, as well as the constant development of the numerical methods (e.g., Finite Element (FE) methods) allowed researchers to explore different wing structural configurations [1] that deviate from the traditional wing design, which is based on the experience gained so far
The method is demonstrated in the preliminary design of a multispar composite wing configuration and it has been proven that the actual member sizing can be obtained in a relative small time frame, even though iterations are required
Summary
The application of composite materials in primary aeronautical structures is progressively increasing, e.g., about 25% of the AIRBUS A380 aircraft Herbeck developed a design methodology for sizing a wing structure by having as design criteria the buckling of skin and ribs, as well as bolted joints behavior [24]. (b) global buckling criteria for the stiffened skin and spar webs, as well as (c) bearing bypass analysis for the bolted joints To this end, the member sizing of the preliminary design phase can become more accurate, since criteria from the detail design phase are considered. The 4-spar composite wing layout is compared to a conventional 2-spar configuration in order to examine if multispar configurations demonstrate potential advantages, such as, stronger and stiffer structural arrangement, possibility of skin thickness reductions, or enhancement of their bearing bypass behavior.
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