Engineering Fellowships for Growth: Materials by Design for Impact in Aerospace Engineering

政策制定者和监管机构要求航空航天工业到2020年减少50%的二氧化碳排放和80%的氮氧化物排放。为了满足这些巨大的需求，并确保未来负担得起的航空旅行，至关重要的是制造更轻的飞机，消耗最少的燃料。航空航天研究界认识到需要做出巨大的性能改进，并正在考虑几个新的飞机概念，以摆脱传统的两翼单机身配置。这给飞机设计带来了新的挑战。机翼是一种高度复杂的设计结构，因为它需要考虑空气动力学和结构行为之间的复杂相互作用。因此，目前的设计实践在很大程度上是基于使用以前成功的设计数据。脱离传统飞机的挑战是，适用于新概念飞机的成功历史设计数据有限。然而，一旦我们有了机翼设计，就有了复杂的计算方法来分析机翼在外部飞行条件下的行为。事实上，利用不断增长的计算能力的计算分析方法已经有了很大的发展。材料计算模型的最新发展就是一个很好的例子。使用这项技术，新的先进材料可以用传统材料开发所需时间的一半来创造，计算材料研究的投资回报率估计在300-900%之间。这项研究是开发复杂的计算方法来设计以前从未考虑过的飞机构型的核心。目前的大多数方法分析给定的材料或结构对外部环境的响应，例如在以0.8,38000英尺的速度飞行时。本研究方法的不同之处在于，它们与分析方法相反：它们将根据外部环境确定先进材料和结构布局的最佳组合，从而设计出适合给定飞行条件的最佳机翼。我的研究方法是将设计问题表示为一组数学函数，并开发计算方法来找到最优解。因此，该方法将同时找到材料和结构配置的最优设计。该奖学金的成果将为工程师提供设计复杂飞机结构的复杂工具。这些工具的开发和传播将使其能够用于一系列其他复杂的工程问题。英国拥有全球航空航天市场17%的份额，收入240亿GB，为全国创造了3.6%的就业机会。国际民用航空市场预计到2030年将增长到4万亿美元，英国市场有机会到2030年增长到3520亿美元。至关重要的是，英国必须发展这种独特的能力，以确保我们保持这些高价值产品和工艺的市场份额，并确保其经济有增长机会。此外，通过优化使用材料而节省的重量将导致实现排放目标，从而确保子孙后代的可持续环境。

Policy makers and regulatory bodies are demanding the aerospace industry reduces CO2 emission by 50% and NOx emission by 80% by 2020. In order to meet these drastic demands and ensure affordable air travel in the future, it is essential to make lighter aircraft which will use minimum fuel. The aerospace research community recognises the need to make a dramatic performance improvement and is considering several new aircraft concepts that move away from the conventional two-wing-one-fuselage configuration. This brings new challenges to aircraft design. A wing is a highly complex structure to design as it needs to consider the complex interaction between aerodynamics and structural behaviour. The current design practice is therefore very much based on using the previous successful design data. The challenge of departing from the conventional aircraft is that there are limited successful historical design data that is applicable to new concept aircraft. Once we have a wing design, however, there are sophisticated computational methods that analyse how the wing behaves under external flight conditions.In fact, there has been a significant level of development in computational analysis methods taking advantage of growing computational power. A prime example of this is the recent development in the computational modelling of materials. Using this technology, new advanced materials can be created in half the time that traditional material development takes and the return on investment in computational materials research has been estimated at between 300 - 900%.This fellowship is at the heart of developing sophisticated computational methods to design aircraft configurations that have not been considered before. The majority of the current methods analyse how a given material or structure responds to the external environment such as in flight at speed Mach 0.8, 38000 ft. What is different about the methods in this research is that they are inverse of the analysis methods: They will determine the best combination of advanced material and structural configuration based on the external environment and hence design the optimum wing for the given flight conditions. My research approach is to represent the design problem as a set of mathematical functions and develop computational methods to find the optimum solution. The methods will therefore, find the optimum design for both materials and structural configuration at the same time. The outcome of this fellowship will provide engineers with a sophisticated tool to design complex aircraft structures. The tools will be developed and disseminated in a way that they can be used on a range of other complex engineering problems.The UK has 17% of the global aerospace market share with revenue of £24 billion and is responsible for 3.6% national employment. With the international civil aerospace market forecast to grow to $4 trillion by 2030, the UK market has the opportunity to grow to $352 billion by 2030. It is critical that the UK develops this unique capability to ensure we maintain the market share of these high value products and processes and its economy has the opportunity for growth. Furthermore, the weight savings which will be made from optimum use of materials lead to meeting the emission targets, thus ensuring sustainable environment for the future generations.