Structural Development of an Eco-Efficient Commercial Aircraft

航空是温室气体(GHG)增长最快的来源之一。目前，该部门占全球温室气体排放量的4.9%。此外，这种情况是不可持续的，因为在2014年的一份报告中，波音公司表示，航空旅行需求预计将以每年5.4%的速度增长，直到2033年。这种情况强调了我们发展生态经济型民用飞机的必要性。通过设计新的飞机配置和显著减轻飞机重量，可以实现朝着这一目标迈出的一步。混合翼身(BWB)结构因其燃油效率高而被建议用于下一代客机。以前，我开发了针对BWB飞机机身复杂性的结构建模和分析方法。目前，我把注意力转向飞机的重量，这对它的环境有效性有很大影响。我建议使用添加制造的格子材料来建造机身的主要结构。然而，随着期望的重量减轻和随之而来的机身柔性，在结构分析的所有阶段开发高保真设计载荷至关重要，该设计载荷考虑机身几何和惯性非线性及其对飞机气动弹性响应和飞行动力学的影响。值得注意的是，人们在开发重量最轻的飞机方面做出了努力。然而，现有的大多数发展都考虑了结构优化的一组确定的临界荷载。然而，飞机设计是多学科的。由于优化导致的结构修改导致了新的质量和刚度分布，从而改变了飞机的动态响应和载荷。这导致其他研究人员考虑负载中的不确定性，这些不确定性最终会产生性能非最佳的飞机设计。事实上，这一严重挫折导致加拿大航空航天工业的飞机开发计划长期拖延，给我们的经济造成了数十亿美元的损失。在此基础上，利用飞机初步模型产生的临界载荷工况进行详细设计时的结构优化，同时利用飞机优化模型产生验证载荷。后者产生的载荷必须低于前者的载荷，这种情况并不常见。为了解决这个问题，我建议将飞机载荷分析整合到其结构优化过程中。虽然这表明这是一条计算成本很高的路线，但将开发一种有效的算法来确定动作类型，这些动作将根据给定的质量和刚度分布产生临界载荷，而不需要运行全范围的载荷分析。如果成功，它将大大减少负荷分析的规模，使所提出的过程可行。新工艺将按照工业标准开发，并将用于由添加制造的格子材料制成的机身的多尺度优化。

Aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Currently, the sector accounts for 4.9% of worldwide GHG emissions. Moreover, this situation is not sustainable as in a 2014 report, Boeing indicated that demand for air travel is projected to increase at 5.4% a year until 2033. This situation emphasize our need to develop ecological and economical civil aircraft. A step change towards that goal may be realized through designing novel aircraft configurations and significantly reducing aircraft weight. Blended Wing Body (BWB) configuration is proposed for next generation of airliners due to its fuel efficiency. Formerly, I developed structural modeling and analysis methodologies addressing airframe complexity of BWB aircraft. Currently, I am turning my attention to aircraft weight which considerably affects its environmental effectiveness. I propose to build airframe primary structures using additively manufactured lattice materials. However, with expected weight reduction and consequent airframe flexibility, it is critical to develop high fidelity design loads at all stages of structural analysis taking into consideration airframe geometrical and inertial non-linearity and their effect on aircraft aeroelastic response and flight dynamics. Notable efforts are made toward developing aircraft with minimized weight. However, most of existing developments considered a deterministic set of critical loads for structural optimization. Nevertheless, aircraft design is multidisciplinary. Structural modification due to optimization results in new mass and stiffness distribution that changes aircraft dynamic response and loads. This led other researchers to consider uncertainties in loads which ultimately generate aircraft design with off-optimal performance. In fact, this critical setback results in long delays in aircraft development programs in Canadian aerospace industry which costs our economy billions of dollars. There, structural optimization at detailed design is conducted using critical load cases generated by preliminary aircraft model while certification loads are generated employing aircraft optimized model. Loads generated by the latter must be lower than those of the former which is not often the case. To overcome this issue, I propose to integrate aircraft loads analysis into its structural optimization process. While this suggest a computationally expensive route, an efficient algorithm will be developed to determine type of maneuvers that will generate critical loads based on a given mass and stiffness distribution without the need to run a full range of loads analyses. If successful, it will reduce size of loads analysis drastically making proposed process feasible. The new process will be developed with industrial standards and will be used for multiscale optimization of airframe made of additively manufactured lattice materials.