The introduction of composite materials in aircraft structures is having a profound effect on the design process. These materials permit the designer to tailor material properties to improve structural and aerodynamic performance. In order to obtain maximum benefits, a more integrated multidisciplinary design process is required. Furthermore, because of the complexity of the combined aerodynamic/structural design process numerical optimization methods are required.
The present research is focused on a major difficulty associated with the multidisciplinary design optimization process - its enormous computational cost. We consider two approaches for reducing this computational burden: (i) development of efficient methods for cross-sensitivity calculation using perturbation methods; and (ii) the use of approximate numerical optimization procedures. Our efforts are concentrated upon combined aerodynamic-structural optimization. Results are presented for the integrated design of a sailplane wing. The impact of our computational procedures on the computational costs of integrated designs are discussed. / M.S.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/90966 |
| Date | January 1987 |
| Creators | Eppard, William M. |
| Contributors | Aerospace Engineering |
| Publisher | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | xiii, 73 leaves, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 16665529 |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds