Abstract Innovative high aspect-ratio airframe designs are leading the way to a more sustainable future in aviation by improving aerodynamic efficiency through reduced induced drag. These configurations, however, inevitably exhibit increased weight and structural flexibility, which in turn poses challenges with structural integrity and aeroelastic stability. To address these challenges, the aerospace industry has increasingly turned to composite materials due to their high stiffness-to-weight ratio, design flexibility, and superior performance characteristics. On that end, tow-steered composites have recently been shown to improve performance compared to conventional straight-fiber composites by leveraging the anisotropic behavior of fiber composites. Despite these advantages, the increased design freedom in conjunction with the increased flexibility, which can give rise to undesirable aeroelastic couplings, make the design and optimization of such airframes highly complex and computationally demanding. In our approach, a computational framework is proposed for the aeroelastic optimization of a high aspect ratio composite commercial aircraft wing. Initially, we explore the effect of tow-steered composite skins on the mass of a fully-sized reference wing compared to conventional composites and subject to multidisciplinary constraints. We then aim to further investigate the effect of steered composites in various disciplines and thus introduce two single sub-optimization problems, namely the minimization of the stress aggregate function on the skins as well as the maximization of the flutter velocity. Finally, a multi-objective problem is formulated for the simultaneous optimization across three objectives. Multiple gains in performance are observed across all of the objectives in the aforementioned optimization problems, indicating the positive effect of tow-steered composites in the design of high aspect-ratio wings.
Multidisciplinary aeroelastic optimization of high aspect-ratio composite aircraft wings via tow-steering
CEAS Aeronaut J
09.06.2025
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch