The digital transformation of engineering design processes is essential for the aerospace industry to remain competitive in the global market. Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) frameworks play a crucial role in this transformation by integrating various engineering disciplines and enabling the optimization of complex spacecraft structures. Since the design team consists of multiple entities from different domains working together to build the final product, the design and analysis tools must be readily available and compatible. An integrated approach is required to handle the problem's complexity efficiently. Additionally, most aerospace structures are made from composite panels. It is challenging to optimize such panels as they require the satisfaction of constraints where the design ply thicknesses and orientations can only take discrete values prescribed by the manufacturers. Heuristics such as particle swarm or genetic algorithms are inefficient because they provide sub-optimal solutions when the number of design variables is large. They also are computationally expensive in handling the combinatorial nature of the problem. To overcome these challenges, this work proposes a two-fold solution that integrates multiple disciplines and efficiently optimizes composite spacecraft structures by building a rapid design framework. The proposed model-based design framework for spacecraft structures integrates commercially available software from Siemens packages such as NX and HEEDS and open-source Python libraries. The framework can handle multiple objectives, constraint non-linearities, and discrete design variables efficiently using a combination of black-box global optimization algorithms and Mixed Integer Programming (MIP)-based optimization techniques developed in this work. Lamination parameters and MIP are adopted to optimize composite panels efficiently. The framework integrates structural, thermal and acoustic analysis to optimize the spacecraft's overall performance while satisfying multiple design constraints. Its capabilities are demonstrated in optimizing a small spacecraft structure for required structural performance under various static and dynamic loading conditions when the spacecraft is inside the launch vehicle or operating in orbit. / Doctor of Philosophy / The design of new spacecraft takes several years and requires significant resources. The primary design objective is to minimize spacecraft mass/cost while satisfying the mission requirements. This is done by altering the structure's geometric and material properties. Most spacecraft panels are made from composite materials where the orientations of fiber paths and the thickness of the panel determine its strength and stiffness. Finding the best values for these parameters cannot be done efficiently using existing optimization algorithms, as several combinations of orientations can give a similar performance which can be subpar. In this dissertation, mathematical programming is adopted for fast evaluation of optimum panel properties, thereby saving a significant amount of resources compared to conventional techniques. Moreover, the requirements that govern the design process are handled one at a time in an organization. This leads to discrepancies in the various teams' designs that satisfy all requirements. A framework is built to integrate all requirements to account for their conflicting nature and quickly give the best possible spacecraft structural design configuration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115623 |
| Date | 03 July 2023 |
| Creators | Borwankar, Pranav Sanjay |
| Contributors | Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Kapania, Rakesh K., Inoyama, Daisaku, Seidel, Gary D., Bansal, Manish, Patil, Mayuresh J. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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