23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-3.4.2

OPTIMAL DESIGN OF FUSELAGE STRUCTURES

G. Elliott, L. J. J. Kok
Bombardier Aerospace, Canada

Keywords: optimisation, preliminary design, fibre-metal laminate, fml

There is an industry-wide effort to produce aircraft designs that are more competitive in terms of performance and cost, and to do so with a decrease in development time. To achieve these goals for "Faster, Better, and Cheaper" solutions, the preliminary stage of aircraft design is evolving to include greater detail, and greater consideration for the interaction of multiple disciplines. The dream of fully integrated processes that allow for the creation of optimal designs is slowly, but most assuredly, becoming a reality. This paper introduces a methodology for the optimal design of fuselage structures for use in an MDO environment. The process integrates a finite element package (NASTRAN or ASAS), in-house pre- and post-processors (UPDATEPROPS and RESERVE), and visualisation (PATRAN) techniques to automate the sizing of the fuselage skins and stringers.

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