A Preliminary Study of Wing Substructure Layouts Using a Parametric Structures Evaluation Tool

Abstract

Increased demand for improved aircraft performance and efficiency has led to consideration of structural weight reduction and manufacturing cost savings opportunities early in the design cycle. SPANDSET is a toolkit developed to facilitate these goals. By using lower fidelity classical analysis methods it is able to automate preliminary airplane wing box sizing at rapid speeds suitable for design space exploration. A case study illustrates how SPANDSET enables top-down design for a previously existing small business jet wing box structure and resulted in an improved design in terms of weight and cost.

Development of an Integrated Structural Analysis Capability for Airframe Preliminary Design

“…12 SPANDSET provides a means for rapidly evaluating a large number of designs, making it possible to uncover combinations of design variables that may provide lighter weight or lower cost solutions than the combinations suggested by more traditional design development processes. The current tool set incorporates structural optimization techniques at the detail level, providing minimum weight solutions for a specific set of load inputs but ignores the interactions or coupling that exists between the internal loads and the various analysis routines used in the sizing cycle.…”