CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY

Simon OReilly

FW-12 Civil Transport Airliner Structural Design of the Forward Mid-wing Section

School of Engineering MSc Aerospace Vehicle Design MSc Thesis

Academic Year: 2012 - 2013

Supervisor: Dr. S. Guo September 2012

i

CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY

College of Aeronautics Aerospace Vehicle Design

MSc

Academic Year 2012 - 2013 Simon OReilly

Structural Design of Forward Section of FW-12 Aircraft Midwing

Supervisor: Dr. S. Guo September 2012

This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science

Cranfield University 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright owner.
ii

Thesis health warning

This thesis covers the part of the assessment concerned with the Group Design Project. Readers must be aware that the work contained within is not necessarily 100% correct and caution should be exercised if the thesis or the data it contains is being used for future work. If in doubt, please refer to the supervisor named in the thesis, or the Department of Aerospace Technology.

iii

Abstract
This thesis describes the procedure followed in order to design the structure of the forward mid-wing section of the FW-12 aircraft which was the subject of the Group Design Project by the March Intake of the 2012 Aerospace Vehicle Design course at Cranfield University. The task was to design as light a structure as possible which could safely support the loads applied during the various flight conditions which the aircraft would experience and to conform to the airworthiness requirements as specified in EASA CS-25. The structure is comprised of the upper and lower skin/stringer panels, 3 spars and 7 ribs. The cargo bay for the FW-12 is located within the forward mid-wing section and therefore the structure has been designed to support the loads due to the pressurisation of this area. As the wings of the FW-12 encompass the entire aircraft the structure has also been designed to support the loads that wings are typically subjected to. Both metallic alloys and composite materials were used in order to design the structure the final mass of which is estimated at 2682.9kg. It was necessary to make numerous assumptions and approximations to design the structure due to the time constraints of the project so there is still some work to be done in order to improve the design. However the design presented in this thesis should serve as a good first iteration for the finalised design of a structure which could be manufactured and put into service on the aircraft.

iv

Acknowledgements
There are numerous people who I would to thank for their various contributions to this thesis. I would like to thank the

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................. ix LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................... xi LIST OF EQUATIONS ....................................................................................... xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .............................................................................. xiv 1 Introduction...................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Overview ................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Project Specification ................................................................................. 2 1.3 Project Group Organisation ...................................................................... 3 1.4 Design Process Overview ......................................................................... 4 2 Loading Actions ............................................................................................... 5 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 5 2.2 Aerodynamic Background Theory ............................................................. 5 2.3 Loading Analysis Theory........................................................................... 6 2.4 Elevator Load Calculations ....................................................................... 7 2.4.1 Assumptions....................................................................................... 9 2.4.2 Steady Level Flight ............................................................................. 9 2.4.3 Steady Rotary Motion ....................................................................... 12 2.4.4 Pitch Acceleration Cases ................................................................. 13 2.4.5 Loading Analysis Results ................................................................. 14 2.5 Further Calculations ................................................................................ 15 2.6 Critical Cases .......................................................................................... 16 2.7 Results and Discussion........................................................................... 19 3 Initial Structural Design.................................................................................. 21 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 21 3.2 Spars and Ribs ....................................................................................... 21 3.3 Forward Mid-wing Structure .................................................................... 23 3.4 Light Frames ........................................................................................... 26 3.5 Challenges resulting from pressurisation of structureError! Bookmark not defined. 4 Material Selection .......................................................................................... 28 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 28 4.2 Composite Materials ............................................................................... 29 4.2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 29 4.2.2 Components Designed Using Composites and Materials Chosen ... 30 4.3 Aluminium Alloys..................................................................................... 32 4.3.1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 32 vi

4.3.2 Components Designed Using Aluminium Alloy and Materials Chosen .................................................................................................................. 32 4.4 Use of Titanium Alloys ............................................................................ 34 5 Initial Sizing ................................................................................................... 36 5.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 36 5.2 Leading Edge Thickness......................................................................... 36 5.3 Skin Stringer Panels ............................................................................... 37 5.4 Spar Sizing ............................................................................................. 40 5.5 Bulkhead Sizing ...................................................................................... 42 5.6 Rib Sizing ................................................................................................ 42 5.7 Light Frames ........................................................................................... 43 6 Detail Design ................................................................................................. 45 6.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 45 6.2 Skin Stringer Panel Design ..................................................................... 45 6.2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 45 6.2.2 Buckling Analysis using TW Panels ................................................. 46 6.2.3 Maintenance Considerations ............................................................ 48 6.2.4 Composite Layups Chosen .............................................................. 50 6.2.5 Lightning Strike Considerations ........... Error! Bookmark not defined. 6.3 Detailed Spar Design .............................................................................. 52 6.4 Bulkhead Design ........................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. 6.5 Spar Caps ............................................................................................... 56 6.6 Manufacturing Considerations ................................................................ 76 6.7 Rib Design .............................................................................................. 58 6.7.1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 58 6.7.2 Rib flange design ............................................................................. 59 6.7.3 Rib Webs.......................................................................................... 64 6.7.4 Rib Design Requirements ................................................................ 68 6.7.5 Cargo Bay Cutouts .............................. Error! Bookmark not defined. 6.8 Heavy Rib Analysis ................................................................................. 70 6.9 Maintenance Considerations .................................................................. 72 6.10 Discussion ............................................................................................ 80 7 Finite Element Analysis ................................................................................. 83 7.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 83 7.2 Skin/Stringer Panel Analysis ................................................................... 84 7.3 Pressurisation Analysis ........................................................................... 86 7.4 Panel Buckling Analysis .......................................................................... 87 7.5 Full Section Model Analysis .................................................................... 88 7.5.1 Meshing............................................................................................ 89 7.5.2 Boundary Conditions and Applied Loads ......................................... 90 7.6 Results and Discussion........................................................................... 91 vii

8 Fatigue and Damage Tolerance .................................................................... 97 8.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 97 8.2 Component Analysed for Fatigue and Damage Tolerance ..................... 97 8.3 Loading Spectrum ................................................................................. 101 8.4 AFGROW Analysis ............................................................................... 103 8.5 Inspection Intervals ............................................................................... 106 8.6 Results and Discussion......................................................................... 106 9 Aeroelasticity ............................................................................................... 108 9.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 108 9.1.1 Static Aeroelastic Phenomena ....................................................... 108 9.2 Torsional Divergence ............................................................................ 109 9.3 Discussion ............................................................................................ 110 10 Project Management & Interface Issues Control ....................................... 111 11 Mass Estimation ........................................................................................ 115 12 Results ........................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. 13 Discussion ...................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. 14 Conclusion................................................................................................. 119 15 Airworthiness Requirements Section: ........................................................ 118 16 Bibliography............................................................................................... 126 17 Appendices................................................................................................ 129 Appendix A Loading Actions ....................................................................... 129 Appendix B - Initial Sizing Appendix ........................................................... 134 Appendix C Rib Analysis using Strand7...................................................... 137 Appendix D CoALA Results ........................................................................ 140 Appendix E Detail Stressing ....................................................................... 144

viii

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 The FW-12 Aircraft ............................................................................... 2 Figure 2 Control Devices on FW-12 ................................................................... 8 Figure 3 Moment Balance on Aircraft in Trim (1) ................................................ 9 Figure 4 Shear Force Envelope (7) .................................................................. 17 Figure 5 Bending Moment Envelope (7) ........................................................... 18 Figure 6 Torque Envelope (7)........................................................................... 18 Figure 7 Changes made to FW-12 Planform. Left - Conceptual Design Stage. Right - Final Design ................................................................................... 23 Figure 8 Plan view of FW-12 aircraft showing boundaries of the forward midwing section .............................................................................................. 24 Figure 9 Finalised Upper Panel Sizing Data from TW Panels .......................... 47 Figure 10 Third Spar Geometry ........................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Figure 11 Pressurised Skin Section and Equivalent Cylinder ........................... 60 Figure 12 Rib/Skin Connection Geometry ........................................................ 63 Figure 13 Light Rib Chordwise Shear Force Distribution .................................. 67 Figure 14 Light Rib Chordwise Bending Moment Distribution .......................... 67 Figure 15 Loads applied to heavy rib Strand7 model ....................................... 71 Figure 16 Lower Skin Panel Showing Maintenance Hatch Holes ..................... 73 Figure 17 Skin/Stringer Panel Modelled in PATRAN/NASTRAN ...................... 85 Figure 18 Stringer Cross Section Applied to FEA Panel Model ........................ 86 Figure 19 Simulation of pressure loading on skin/stringer panel ...................... 87 Figure 20 CATIA Model used in FEA Analysis ................................................. 89 Figure 21 Boundary Conditions applied to FEA Model ..................................... 91 Figure 22 FEA Pressurisation Analysis Results ............................................... 92 Figure 23 Deflection of full section FEA model ................................................. 94 Figure 24 Stress Tensor Field of entire section FEA model ............................. 95 ix

Figure 25 Loading of lug modelled using AFGROW ....................................... 100 Figure 26: Lug Dimensions for AFGROW Simulation ..................................... 104 Figure 27 Relationship between divergence speed and sweep angle (28) .... 109 Figure 28 Project Management Team Hierarchy ............................................ 111 Figure 29 Planform of the FW-12 before (left) and after (right) the redesign of the trailing edge....................................................................................... 112 Figure 30: Forward Mid-Wing Mass Breakdown ............................................. 116 Figure 31 Variation of Leading Edge Thickness due to bird-strike requirement ................................................................................................................ 135 Figure 32 Geometry of Light Rib Model in Strand 7 ....................................... 138 Figure 33 Loads and Boundary Conditions on Strand7 Model ....................... 138 Figure 34 Shear Force Distribution................................................................. 139 Figure 35 Bending Moment Distribution ......................................................... 139

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 Aerodynamic Coefficients for Outer Elevators ..................................... 11 Table 2 Aerodynamic Coefficients for Inner Elevators ...................................... 11 Table 3 Results for most critical aircraft loading cases ..................................... 14 Table 4 Most critical elevator load case ........................................................... 15 Table 5 CFRP Material Properties (9) .............................................................. 31 Table 6 Al 2099 T-83 Material Properties (11).................................................. 34 Table 7 Ply Layups for Skin/Stringer Panels .................................................... 51 Table 8 1g Flight Cases Considered for Fatigue Loading ................................ 98 Table 9 Divergence Velocity Results .............................................................. 110 Table 10 Variation of Aerodynamic Centre Location with Mach number .... Error! Bookmark not defined.

xi

LIST OF EQUATIONS
Equation 1 ................. 10 Equation 2 ........................................ 11 Equation 3 .................................................... 12 Equation 4 ................................ 12 Equation 5 .......................... 12 Equation 6........................................ 12 Equation 7 ......... 12 Equation 8 ..................... 13 Equation 9 .... 13 Equation 10 ............................................................................................... 13 Equation 11 ....................................................... 13 Equation 12 ............................................................................................... 36 Equation 13 .................................................................................. 38 Equation 14......................................................................... 38 Equation 15 ............................................................................ 38 Equation 16 ..................................................................... 38 Equation 17 ........................................................................ 39 Equation 18 ...................................................... 40 Equation 19 ........................................................................ 41 Equation 20 ....................................................................... 42 Equation 21........................................................ 47 Equation 22 .............................................................................................................. 48 Equation 23 ................................. 109

xii

xiii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Lift curve slope due to incidence Lift curve slope due to control deflection Mean chord of lifting surface Acceleration due to gravity Location of Aerodynamic Centre as a fraction of mean chord from LE

xiv

1 Introduction
1.1 Overview
Over the past century or so innovations in aircraft design have brought consistent improvements to the performance of aircraft in terms of their velocity, fuel consumption, noise, cost, passenger comfort and environmental impact to name but a few areas. However, broadly speaking the trend in the design of civil transport aircraft has led to a configuration consisting of a tubular fuselage with a wing approximately halfway along the length of this tube and a tail-plane towards the back of the aircraft for stabilising the vehicle. This design has been incrementally enhanced and these developments have all resulted in a gradual improvement in the performance. Now however the design has been refined to the point that the returns on the cost of developing, testing and implementing these improvements are diminishing. To exacerbate the situation, new targets have been set by the International Civil Aircraft Organisation (ICAO) for the years 2020 and 2050 which demand further significant improvements in the performance of these aircraft with respect to their greenhouse gas and noise emissions as well as their fuel consumption. For these reasons, amongst others, there has been renewed interest in the development of flying wing civil transport aircraft. The flying wing configuration has numerous advantages over the conventional fin and tube design seen with current transport aircraft, in particular the lift to drag ratio achievable with flying wing aircraft allows for a significant reduction in drag acting on an aircraft and hence on the thrust required which leads to large savings in fuel consumption. This years Group Design Project on the March intake of the Aerospace Vehicle Design course at Cranfield University has been on the design of a flying wing civil transport aircraft, the FW-12.

Figure 1 The FW-12 Aircraft

The FW-12 is designed to seat 200 passengers in a three class mixed seating arrangement and a maximum of 248. The unconventional flying wing configuration gives rise to numerous design challenges especially with regards to the structure of the aircraft. This document discusses the design of the structure of the mid-wing forward section of the aircraft and covers the work done by the author throughout the course of the project. The thesis discusses the loading analysis carried out, the structural layout decided upon by the structures sub-team, the initial and detailed sizing of the various structural components in the section, the finite element analysis conducted as part of the study and the fatigue analysis carried out as well as the work done as part of the secondary task of interface issues control management.

1.2 Project Specification

The project built upon the conceptual design work done the previous year by a group of students supervised by Prof. Howard Smith (1). This provided the mission and payload requirements for the aircraft, which are summarised below: A capacity of 200 passengers in a three class configuration up to a maximum capacity of 248 passengers in an all economy configuration A mission range of 7500nm at a cruise velocity of Mach 0.82 A maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of 176,469kg 2

A design life of 10000 flights or 80000 flight hours

While there are some very appealing advantages to flying wing aircraft the concept is not without its drawbacks. In terms of the structure of the aircraft there are numerous design challenges arising from the flying wing shape of the vehicle. In particular the pressurisation of the structure proves to be challenging owing to the lack of a circular fuselage as found on conventional aircraft. The longitudinal stability of the configuration has also been a long-standing design challenge in the development of flying wing aircraft. Other problems owing to the different layout of the aircraft include its maintainability, the evacuation of passengers in emergency situations and its ground handling and parking in airports designed to cater for conventional configuration aircraft.

1.3 Project Group Organisation

The project team was comprised of three sub-teams: Systems, Structures and Avionics. The author was responsible for the design of the forward section of the mid-wing as part of the structural design team along with: Mr. Udaya Rai Front inner wing Mr. Li Yan Front inner wing Mr. Li Zhongyang Aft inner wing Mr. Jiang Zhen Aft inner wing Mr. Julien Ertveldt Aft mid wing Mr. Sheng Yongmin Outer wing Mr. Wei Liu Outer wing Mr. Li Wan Split drag rudder design Mr. Wu Liwei - Flaps and Ailerons Design Mr Yang Kun Slats design Mr. Gokhan Soylen Elevator Design Mr Liu Yi Fin design

1.4 Design Process Overview

To being the process of designing the structure of the FW-12 the loads which would be applied to the aircraft needed to be calculated. To determine these loads the structures team was divided into numerous sub-groups, each one responsible for determining the forces applied to the aircraft in a particular scenario as specified in the airworthiness requirements detailed in CS-25 (2). The structure was then designed to meet these requirements under these applied loads while aiming to keep its mass as low as possible. In order to do this, materials were carefully selected based on the desired mechanical properties while consideration was given to their cost and then the lowest possible thicknesses which would support the loads were used for the design. Finite element analysis was then carried out on models representing the components in order to compare the results with those calculated both by hand and using computational tools such as Microsoft Excel. 3D models of the components were also developed using CATIA which allowed for visualisation of the aircraft. The design process involved constant liaising with the other designers on the GDP team to ensure that all the systems and structures of the aircraft would function together as effectively as possible.

2 Loading Actions
2.1 Introduction
The first step in the design of the aircrafts structure was to determine the loads which it would be expected to support. Accomplishing this task required a great deal of work and the structures team was divided into various sub-teams, each of which was responsible for calculating certain required data. The author was placed in the Symmetrical Loading Team and given the task of determining the loads encountered during Elevator Pitch Cases (3). This included the forces required from either set of elevators in order to trim the aircraft in steady level flight as well as those required to perform the pitching manoeuvres that are specified in CS-25 requirements.

2.2 Aerodynamic Background Theory

The task of keeping a flying wing aircraft longitudinally stable has been one of the main obstructions to their introduction into use as civil transport aircraft. The tailless configuration of this class of aircraft usually gives them an inherent instability and the movement of the vehicles centre of gravity can have a more serious effect than in conventional aircraft. The longitudinal stability of the FW12 is provided for using the two sets of elevator control devices on the trailing edge of the aircraft. As is the case for conventional aircraft, the need for longitudinal stability control surfaces arises from the imbalance of moments acting on the aircraft. The elevators are control devices whose primary purpose is to provide a suitable force to balance these moments and hence keep the aircraft stable. The motion of an aerofoil body through a fluid causes an uneven pressure distribution to form across the aerofoils surface. The pressure differences from this result in a net force acting on the body. The lift force is the term given to the component of this aerodynamic force that acts perpendicular to the aerofoils motion. The lift is taken to act through the aerodynamic centre of the aerofoil 5

along with a pitching moment acting on the body. The centre of gravity of the aerofoil does not usually lie on the line of action of this force and therefore, a moment is produced. The component of the aerodynamic force which acts along the direction of the aerofoils motion is referred to as the drag force and similarly the centre of gravity will not necessarily lie on this forces line of action and thus resulting in a moment. Finally, if the thrust force provided by the engines does not act through the centre of gravity, a moment will result. The sum of these moments will have the effect of causing the aircraft to rotate as it passes through the air. To prevent this from occurring, a force is applied to the aircraft by the elevator which causes the net moment on the aircraft to be zero, hence keeping it in stable flight. The purpose of the authors work during the loading actions phase of the GDP was to determine the forces required from the elevator to balance the moments acting on the aircraft under various different phases of flight as well as the force required for non-steady level flight where the elevator is used to impart a net moment on the vehicle and thus rotate it as desired (4).

2.3 Loading Analysis Theory

The analysis of the loading on the aircraft elevators initially proved difficult due to its unusual layout. As so few flying wing aircraft have been designed there was a distinct lack of reference literature when compared to that available for performing similar calculations for a conventional aircraft. The typical equations used are often simplified based on assumptions which, while valid for a typical aircraft, may not be valid for a tailless vehicle. So using both the lecture notes provided by Prof. Howard Smith (5) and the theory outlined in Aircraft Loading and Structural Layout by Denis Howe (6) the equations governing the longitudinal stability of aircraft were re-examined and any assumptions were checked to confirm whether or not the equations were applicable to the FW-12 and its flying wing configuration.

There were three distinct flight scenarios which needed to be examined to determine the worst possible loading case the elevators could encounter in service. These were; steady level flight, steady rotary motion and pitching acceleration cases. However within each of these cases a number of flight parameters can be varied such as the altitude the aircraft is flying at, the mass of the aircraft during flight or the velocity at which it is flying and so an infinite number of possible loading scenarios exist. The author, along with the other team members assigned to calculate the data concerning the elevator pitch cases; Mr. Gkhan Sylen, Mr. Udaya Rai and Mr. Julien Ertveldt, collectively decided that it would be useful to construct the Microsoft Excel program used to calculate the loads in such a way that each variable could be adjusted parametrically and thus the load applied to the elevators could be calculated for any loading case. Once the programme was constructed the results corresponding to some datum altitudes and velocities were tabulated so that the loads on the elevators could be easily interpreted. The specific load cases were taken from the CS-25 requirements (2) related to the longitudinal stabilisation of aircraft, namely those listed in CS 25.321 Flight Loads and 25.331 Symmetric Manoeuvring Conditions. The goal of performing these calculations was to use the results in the next phase of the detailed structural design of the aircraft.

2.4 Elevator Load Calculations

The configuration of the elevators and other control devices of the aircraft can be seen in the image below. The inner elevators are the most central control devices shown in red and the outer elevators are shown in pink:

Figure 2 Control Devices on FW-12

As there is no discernible tail on a flying wing aircraft this complicates the calculation of the loads required to control the aircraft longitudinally. For example the moment arm over which the elevator force has effect on a conventional aircraft is the distance between the centres of pressure of the wing and tailplane aerofoil bodies. However, with a flying wing configuration the effect of deploying the elevator is more akin to moving the overall centre of pressure of the entire aircraft body from its chordwise position at zero elevator deflection. As a result of physical differences such as this, a number of equations used for various pitching conditions, many of which are semiempirical and derived from tests performed using tailed aircraft, were not applicable to the FW-12. This had implications when calculating the unchecked pitching manoeuvres and prevented the calculation of the loads experienced during checked manoeuvres. In Prof. Howes book it is stated that the equations outlined for calculation of checked pitch manoeuvres are not applicable to a tailless aircraft configuration since the semi-empirical relationships were derived for conventional aircraft. A simulator investigation is really required for this class of aircraft. Due to time constraints, constructing such a simulation was not possible and it was decided that only the unchecked pitch manoeuvres would be considered. This decision was presented at a weekly GDP meeting and agreed upon by the staff and team members in attendance. In the following 8

sections the calculations performed to determine the forces encountered when the aircraft performs symmetric manoeuvres are discussed and a worked example of the calculations can be found in Appendix A.

2.4.1 Assumptions
The following assumptions were made during the loading analysis: The airframe is a rigid body and the velocities are constant The aircraft is not accelerating along its longitudinal axis For initial calculation trim is assumed to be horizontal In gust cases the aircrafts velocity as well as its altitude remain constant and no action is taken by the pilot via the controls

2.4.2 Steady Level Flight

The load required from the elevator in steady level flight was determined by considering the loads acting on the aircraft in this state. These are shown graphically below:

Lift M_engine M0

M_trim G

Figure 3 Moment Balance on Aircraft in Trim (1)

It should be noted that this image, taken from the conceptual design report conducted by a previous group of students at Cranfield University (1), shows the situation for when the aircrafts centre of gravity is in its most aft position which results in the aerodynamic centre being forward of this point. For the majority of common flight conditions the aerodynamic centre of the FW-12 aircraft is actually aft of the centre of gravity. Also the drag force acting on the aircraft is not shown in the diagram but this would also cause a moment proportional to the distance in the z direction between the aerodynamic centre and centre of gravity. Nevertheless the diagram indicates that the following equation should apply if the aircraft is to be in equilibrium:
Equation 1

Where

is the moment due to the lift force and equal to the magnitude of

the lift force multiplied by the distance between the aerodynamic centre and the centre of gravity and is the moment due to the drag force and the distance

from its line of action to the centre of gravity. As mentioned already the balancing of a flying wing aircraft is more complicated than with a conventional aircraft as it is the pressure distribution over the entire vehicle which is altered by the deflection of the elevators. It was therefore necessary to determine an effective tail length, i.e. the distance from the centre of gravity which it was taken that the elevator force would act. The following values from (1) were used to determine this:

10

Table 1 Aerodynamic Coefficients for Outer Elevators

Table 2 Aerodynamic Coefficients for Inner Elevators

By dividing the pitch moment coefficient by the lift moment coefficient the effective tail arm could be determined at a given Mach number. Once this value was determined, the force required from the elevator in order to apply the required moment to the aircraft could be determined. Once the force provided by the elevator had been calculated, the deflection angle required to produce this force could be found using the following formula:
Equation 2

11

Where

is the value of the elevator lift-curve slope for a particular Mach

number as shown in Tables 1 and 2 above. Determining the moment required to trim the aircraft was the most complicated part of these calculations; the method for doing so is demonstrated in Appendix B.1.

2.4.3 Steady Rotary Motion

The next critical flight condition examined was the loads required of the elevators to execute steady rotary motion. Once again the equations used were taken from references (5) and (6) and were checked to ensure that they suited the flying wing body of the FW-12. To solve for the loads applied the shortperiod damping coefficient ( ) and the natural damped frequency ( ) were

required, these were calculated using the following formulae: * ( ) +

Equation 3

Equation 4

From (6), the deflection required from the elevator for steady rotary motion is:
Equation 5

As can be seen from Equation 5, the deflection of the elevator is dependent upon the coefficient of the forcing function ( ). For a tailless configuration such as the FW-12, this function is given as:
*( ) + Equation 6

From this it follows that

can be calculated as follows:

Equation 7

12

This equation was solved using Excel and the increment in the elevator due to the control deflection was calculated according to the following formula:
Equation 8

2.4.4 Pitch Acceleration Cases

The final set of loading actions analysed was when the aircrafts angular velocity about its centre of gravity was changed. This form of motion involves additional forces owing to the inertia of the aircraft structure. There are two types of control which can be applied in pitch acceleration cases, checked and unchecked control. As explained above, it is expressly stated in (6) that the equations given for checked control acceleration cases are not valid for tailless aircraft as they are semi-empirical and the values used have been gathered from experiments using conventional configuration aircraft. As a result, only the unchecked calculations are presented here. A step control input is investigated for the pitch acceleration case as per CS25.334, the tailplane incidence load corresponding to such an input is given by:
*
( )

Equation 9

* [ ]

Equation 10

Therefore the total tail load to perform the manoeuvre is:

Equation 11

Some of the equations used by Howe in the derivation of the above expressions are empirical in nature and based on data obtained from tests using conventional aircraft. As such, the results may not be completely valid for the FW-12 however they are accurate enough for the purposes of the GDP loading calculations. In industry, more often than not, all of the loading calculations 13

discussed in this section would be based on more accurate data from more advanced methods of determining the loads applied to the aircraft. These may include wind-tunnel tests, finite element simulations and the use of computational fluid dynamics.

2.4.5 Loading Analysis Results

The goal of the carrying out the calculations related to the symmetric manoeuvres which the aircraft must be able to perform was to determine the maximum load which the elevators would have to provide. Once this was established the loads could be combined with rolling manoeuvres and the worst case loads could be assessed so that the structure could be designed to be able to support them. The cases which led to the most severe loads being applied to the aircraft were found to occur when the aircraft was executing steady rotary motion and the resulting elevator forces are summarised below: Velocity Case # (m/s TAS) 1008 1007 1016 180.06 144.06 278.94 CG Position (m) 13.26 13.26 13.26 Inner Load Factor Elevator Force (N) 2.5 2.5 2.5 Outer Elevator Force (N)

Altitude (m)

Mass (kg)

0 0 10668

176469 176469 176469

-454,658 -660,182 -499,907 -727,549 -568.925 -838,455

Table 3 Results for most critical aircraft loading cases

These cases corresponded to when the most severe loads that were applied to the entire aircraft structure, the highest applied to the two sets of elevators were found to occur at a different case:

14

Case # 1539

Velocity (m/s TAS) 180.06

Altitude (m) 0

Mass (kg) 103,730

CG Position (m) 13.82

Load Factor 1.67

Inner Elevator Force (N) -821,852

Outer Elevator Force (N) -1,139,199

Table 4 Most critical elevator load case

2.5 Further Calculations

After the calculation of the symmetric load cases along with other loading analysis tasks had been completed there was still a considerable delay in producing some of the data required to proceed to the next stage of the design process. In particular the calculation of the chordwise and spanwise load distributions were severely delayed which prevented further design work from going ahead as the loads that each section of the aircraft would be subjected to were unknown. This issue was raised several times during the weekly GDP meetings, in particular by Mr. Julien Ertveldt. Eventually Mr. Ertveldt resolved to calculate the distributions himself despite never being assigned to this task, had this not been done the project would likely have been so delayed that it would not have been possible to complete it in time. The author offered to assist Mr. Ertveldt in determining these load distributions and so began by calculating the mass distribution required in order to finalise the spanwise load distribution. The mass distributions given by the previous year were found to contain numerous errors. In particular the structural mass was incorrectly taken to be distributed evenly along the chord, this would obviously not be the case as the span of the aircraft, and therefore the width of the structure, would vary in the chordwise direction from 0m at the nose of the aircraft to 64m at the wing tips. The author corrected this distribution by considering the planform area of the aircraft and using its

15

variation to calculate a weighting factor so that the mass of the structure could be distributed appropriately. Once this was done the inertial loads could be added to the aerodynamic loads that the surface of the aircraft was subjected to and the resulting distribution of the net loads could be produced. Using this distribution the shear force diagram was obtained by Mr. Ertveldt by integration of the distribution along the half span of the aircraft. The bending moment diagram was then produced by integrating the shear force distribution; again this work was performed by Mr. Ertveldt. The author then began work on calculating the chordwise load distribution as this data was also needed to design the structure of the aircraft but had not been produced. However, this proved much more difficult than expected mainly owing to the 6 spar configuration of the FW-12. Eventually this work was abandoned as work needed to begin on designing the structure and enough time had been spent trying to perform calculations which other members of the structures team were responsible for. The author assisted Mr. Ertveldt by calculating the corrected spanwise mass distribution and with troubleshooting the MATLAB code used to determine the shear force, bending moment and torque diagrams which were subsequently compiled into the loading envelopes. However the majority of the work was carried out by Mr. Ertveldt and was done voluntarily when the members of the structures team who had originally been assigned to complete this task failed to do so which caused considerable delays to the project. In light of this he should be rewarded well for this work as, had it not been done, the project would have produced much poorer results.

2.6 Critical Cases

After the loading actions had been completed the loads encountered during various manoeuvres considered were combined as per the requirements of CS25. The most severe case for each section of the aircraft was determined 16

and these were collected so that the loading envelopes for the aircraft were obtained. As these plotted the worst case values for shear force, bending moment and torque, which the structure must be able to survive under, they were used in the subsequent design of the various components. Below are the plots of the envelopes. It should be noted that these figures were calculated based on the limit loads and so, where appropriate, need to be multiplied by 1.5 to determine the ultimate loads:

Figure 4 Shear Force Envelope (7)

17

Figure 5 Bending Moment Envelope (7)

Figure 6 Torque Envelope (7)

18

2.7 Results and Discussion

This chapter discussed the work performed for the GDP during the loading actions analysis section of the project. Carrying out this work was necessary in order to gain a first estimate of the loads which the aircrafts structure would need to support. First the background theory regarding the longitudinal stability of aircraft was discussed and hence the need for elevators on aircraft was explained. Following this the three distinct flight phases considered for the symmetrical loading manoeuvres, namely steady level flight, steady rotary motion and pitching acceleration cases were discussed along with the theory used to determine the elevator loads required to perform these manoeuvres. Examples of the calculations performed to determine the loads can be found in Appendix A. The results of the loading actions were then presented. The cases of most relevance to the entire structures design team were those which resulted in the worst load distributions applied to the entire aircraft. These were summarised in Table 3. The three cases presented all occur when the aircraft is at its maximum take-off mass. This is unsurprising as the most critical shear forces and bending moments will occur at locations where the inertial forces counteracting the lift generated is highest and the magnitudes of these forces are dependent on the mass on-board. Furthermore it is unsurprising that the highest loads corresponded with the highest load factor considered, n = 2.5g. Both the lift forces and inertial loads will increase proportionately with the load factor and so the highest value of n will result in the highest loads applied. The most critical loads applied to the elevators were also presented. These loads occurred at a lower value of mass and load factor than the previously discussed cases. The reason for this is unclear. The calculations performed to determine these loads were carried out at a later stage than the cases presented in Table 3 as they were when combining some of the load cases later on during the course of the project. It is possible that an error was introduced 19

into the Excel spreadsheet used to determine the loads sometime after the initial calculations had been completed. However another explanation could be that the centre of gravity considered in the case is further aft than in the other three cases discussed. This meant that the distance between the elevators and the centre of gravity was smaller and therefore the elevators would have to provide higher forces in order to produce the moment required to perform the manoeuvre. In the next section the additional work carried out by the author as part of the loading actions was then summarised. This work was needed as the delay in calculating the required loading data was preventing the detailed design of the structure from beginning. Finally the loading envelopes which plot the worst loads experienced by each part of the structure were presented. Using these data the structure could be designed so that it could support the loads applied.

20

3 Initial Structural Design

3.1 Introduction
An aircraft with a conventional layout will have sections that can easily be distinguished as forming either part of the fuselage or part of the wing. For a flying wing aircraft such as the FW-12 this is not the case as the pressurised areas comprising the passenger cabin and cargo bay are also located within the wingbox of the aircraft. This means that these sections must be able to withstand both the loads experienced by a conventional aircraft wing and also the loads due to the pressure differential across the aerodynamic surface. The approach adopted for the design of the mid-wing section was to use the distributed flange philosophy so that the skin stringer panels support the load due to the bending moment caused by the aerodynamic forces. This is typically used for large civil transport aircraft. The spars of the aircraft were designed so that their webs would be capable of supporting the shear loads applied to the aircraft. The pressurisation was then accounted for by considering the skin to consist of flat rectangular panels which connected to the flanges of a light frame at one end and a rib at the other and were simply supported by the stringers. It was thought that considering the panels to behave as if completely flat would prove to be a conservative approach as in reality the skins would in fact have some degree of curvature which would make them more capable of supporting the pressure loads.

3.2 Spars and Ribs

In light of the unusual configuration of the FW-12 it is necessary to clarify the terminology used in this thesis for the various structural components on the aircraft. The spars are the components which run in the spanwise direction, as they are typically termed. The ribs of an aircraft wing usually run either parallel to the direction of flight or perpendicular to the rear spar of the wing. This is much the same case for the FW-12 but for the purposes of this thesis, the term rib refers to the chordwise structural members which comprise various frames, 21

supports and pressure bulkheads on the aircraft. In total the initial layout of the structure of the FW-12 consisted of six spars and 8 large ribs although numerous extra ribs were added throughout the design process by the individual designers. This was done in order to provide more support points for the skins, to form bulkheads for fuels tanks or to provide attachment points for control surfaces. Depending on the requirements of the components at any one section of the aircraft, at some points the spars and ribs consist of full depth webs while at others they are comprised of beams running along the inner surfaces of the upper and lower skins of the aircraft and supported by columns connecting the two together. In the forward mid-wing section the spars consist of full depth webs and the ribs have large cut outs in them to allow for the cargo bay. The locations of the main structural members were decided upon by all of the wing designers at a meeting during the early stages of the project. From the offset the intention was to ensure that the spars would, wherever possible, be aligned with the most heavily loaded components on the aircraft. Therefore the front spars were set to begin from the nose landing gear bay and then extend from here out to the wing tips where they would provide rigid connection points for the leading edge slat. The tallest spar was located so that it would form the boundary between the cargo bay and the main landing gear bay, this allowed for one of the largest single pieces of structure on the aircraft to support both the loads arising from the pressurisation of the cargo bay and those resulting from the landing forces. Throughout this thesis this component is typically referred to as the third spar as it was the most aft of the three spars passing through the forward mid-wing. The heaviest ribs on the aircraft are those which form the walls of the passenger cabin and they fulfil a number of roles. They support both the engines and the associated powerplant systems which are amongst the heaviest objects on the aircraft. From the location where the ribs meet the aft

22

wall of the cargo bay back the rear wall of the cabin the ribs also form a pressure bulkhead between the mid-wing and the pressurised cabin. The structural layout of the aircraft was altered during the course of the project based on recommendations from Prof. John Fielding who pointed out during one of the weekly GDP meetings that the sharp kink in the aft outer wing spars could lead to difficulties in manufacturing and stress concentrations at this point. The changes made to the external shape of the aircraft can be seen in the image below comparing the original planform from the conceptual design stage, shown on the left, with the finalised design, shown on th. Another change which was made during the course of the project was to extend the nose of the aircraft forward. This was necessary due to requirements in CS-25 which dictate that the pilot must be able to visually inspect the leading edge of the aircraft.

Figure 7 Changes made to FW-12 Planform. Left - Conceptual Design Stage. Right - Final Design

3.3 Forward Mid-wing Structure

As discussed previously, the goal of conducting the loading calculations was to determine the forces which the FW-12 aircraft would be subjected to in service. Once these loads had been found, along with the other loads experienced by the aircraft in flight, the process of designing the structure of the aircraft could begin. The portion of the structure which was to be designed by the author is termed the forward-section of the mid-wing. This corresponds to the region from the outer edge of the passenger cabin to the outboard wall of the cargo 23

bay and everything forward of the spar separating the main landing gear bay from the cargo bay including the spar itself. Originally the mid-wing was defined as the area spanning from the outboard wall of the passenger cabin to the most inboard spar that the slat attaches to at 14m from the aircraft centre line. However this was changed by Dr. Shijun Guo so that the mid-wing ended at the outboard wall of the cargo bay and the area from 11.2m to 14m was to be included in the section of Mr. Sheng Yongmin (3) (8). Below is an image showing the layout of the FW-12 in plan view with the forward mid-wing outlined in white.

Figure 8 Plan view of FW-12 aircraft showing the boundaries of the forward midwing section

Within the forward mid-wing section there are a total of 3 spars and 7 ribs. 6 of the ribs are used to support the cargo bay floor which was designed by Mr. Ji Guosheng (9) and the most outboard rib acts as a pressure bulkhead separating the cargo bay from the outer wing. The three spars passing through the section are typically referred to as the first, second and third spars in this thesis with the third spar being the most aft of the three. This spar has been had to withstand not only the shear loading that all of the spars are subjected to but also the loads resulting from the pressure differential between the cargo bay 24

and the external conditions. The CATIA model of the section is shown below with the upper skin removed so that each piece of structure can be seen:

Figure 9 Detailed CATIA Model of Forward Mid-wing Structure

There are numerous challenges to designing this particular section of the aircrafts structure. According to the conceptual design data the shape of the aircraft from the centreline of the aircraft, i.e. Y =0, out to Y=8.4m the profile is that of aerofoil NASA Symmetric SC. However from Y=8.4m out to the wing tip at Y=32m the profile of the aircraft changes to that of the cambered aerofoil NASA RC-SC2. This results in a rapid reduction in the height of the wingbox across the mid-wing section which in turn leads to a sharp increase in the magnitude of the force applied to the skin/stringer panels due to the bending moment produced by the aerodynamic load. Additionally, the mid forward wing incorporates the cargo bay of the FW-12 which must be pressurised and so this adds an additional challenge to the design of the structure as it must be capable of handling the loads arising from the pressure differential. For a civil transport aircraft with a conventional layout the pressurised fuselage is typically a cylindrical structure and the circular cross section results in the pressure loads being distributed evenly as hoop stresses. However, this is not the case for flying wing aircraft and the challenge presented 25

by the pressurisation of a flying wing aircraft has been one of the main stumbling blocks toward further progression of the design. Typically there are two distinct philosophies in the design of pressurised sections on flying wing and blended wing body aircraft. One involves employing two skin surfaces; one which contains the pressure loads and the other which maintains the aerodynamic shape and properties of the aircraft. While this design philosophy has its advantages it can result in a higher structural mass as the outer skin must also be designed to withstand the pressure differential in the event of the inner skin failing which therefore increases its mass (8). The alternative is to design the outer skin to take the pressure load as is the case in a conventional aircraft and it was this design philosophy which was adopted for use on the FW-12. This single skin solution to the pressurisation requirements was chosen not only by the author for the forward mid-wing section but also by all members of the structural design team who had to design pressurised sections.

3.4 Light Frames

After discussing the overall concept for the forward mid-wings structural design with Dr. Shijun Guo, the author decided to include some additional structural components to allow for more support points for the skins and spars. These components, referred to as the light frames, were placed halfway between the ribs and, in addition to the ribs, provide attachment points for the skin-stringer panels as well as acting as the vertical stiffeners and restraint points on the aft pressure bulkhead and spar webs. It was found that including these additional support points allowed for much lower thicknesses to be used for the supported components and therefore they led to a reduction in the weight of the structure. The role of the light frames is essentially to act as a skeleton for the aircraft. As the skin/stringer panels of the aircraft were designed to take the loads resulting from the bending moment applied to the aircraft and the spars were designed to take the shear loads it is assumed that the light frames act only to provide 26

support points and do not take any shear or bending loads. In reality it is inevitable that the frames will take some of these loads but determining the magnitude of the loads transmitted through the frames would require quite a detailed simulation of the entire aircrafts structure and so, due to the time constraints of the GDP, these loads were assumed to be negligible.

27

4 Material Selection
4.1 Introduction
Typically in previous Group Design Projects at Cranfield University the structures design team has been split into two teams, one which would design the aircraft using composite materials and the other which would design the structure using metallic alloys. However for this project there were not sufficient numbers to split the team in two. As a result the decision of which materials would be used for which components was left to each individual designer. To gain experience designing aircraft structures using both class of materials, as well as to capitalise on the respective benefits of each material type, the author opted to use both composite materials and metallic alloys in the design of the structure. The choice of materials used for the various structural components is a key step in the design process as it defines the mechanical properties which will be used to determine the sizing of the structure. In all aspects of aircraft design the mass of the design is one of the most critical quantities and the weight of every component on an aircraft, be it a piece of structure, avionics or of a system, should be kept as low as possible while still being able to fulfil the requirements of its specific function. The materials used in the structures of an aircraft will have a large impact on the overall weight of the structure and so key properties when selecting a material were its density and in particular the specific strength and/or stiffness. The two different class of materials, that is composite materials and metallic alloys, will be discussed in this chapter as well as detailing which components would be made from each material along with the reasoning behind the choices of material.

28

4.2 Composite Materials

4.2.1 Introduction
Composite materials such as carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP) are seeing increasing use in aerospace structures. The key advantage to using these materials in aerospace structures is that their properties can be tailored to the stress field applied locally to the structure by choosing a suitable layup arrangement of the plies used. This means that for components where the loading is very directional composite materials can be tailored for the lowest possible mass to support this load and so, with good design being employed, a significant reduction in the structural mass can be achieved. There are numerous difficulties associated with designing using CFRP materials compared to isotropic alloys. CFRP is manufactured into plies consisting of several parallel carbon fibres set into a resin material. These plies are then stacked in various directions so that some may be parallel to the axis of the loading, some perpendicular and then others at any angle in between and the stacked plies is then typically termed a laminate. It is by being able to increase the number of plies and therefore the mechanical properties of the laminate in the desired direction that composite materials gain their advantage over metallic alloys. However this also is the root of the difficulty in their use in design as the properties of the laminates vary greatly depending on the layup used as well as the properties of the resin and fibres used. The author investigated numerous combinations of resins and fibres which could be used in the composite materials. This proved more difficult than expected. The properties of metallic materials were much easier to find as they do not vary as much as those of composites and, as metallic alloys have been in use in the aerospace industry for longer, there are a larger number of reliable sources available which list their material properties. Therefore the properties of the composite materials used in the design of the structure should be verified by tests performed on sample specimens but for a first iteration of the structural 29

design, it is hoped that the accuracy of the material properties will prove sufficient.

4.2.2 Components Designed Using Composites and Materials Chosen

The values of the composite materials properties were obtained from the website of their manufacturer, Hexcel (9). Hexcel are a company specialising in the manufacture of CFRP materials. Their resin HexPly M91 had been used in the design of previous aircraft structures and so the author researched the use of this resin for the FW-12. The resin was chosen as the manufacturer specifically cited this resin as one which is particularly suited to use in aerospace applications and offers superior performance for primary aircraft structures (9). The fibres used in conjunction with this resin are IM7 UD fibres which come recommended for use with M91 resin by Hexcel, the mechanical properties of each UD ply are shown below: M91 Resin with IM7 Carbon Fibre Unidirectional Prepreg
Ply thickness (mm) Youngs Modulus (GPa)

0.184 165
0 0

Density (kg/m3)
0 Max Tensile Strain (%) 0 Max Compressive Strain (%)
0

1570 1.781 1.113

Youngs Modulus (GPa) 90

8.3

Tensile Strength 0 (MPa)

2980

900 Max Tensile Strain (%)

90 Max Compressive Strain (%)
0

0.454

Tensile Strength 90 (MPa)

76

2.278

Compressive Strength 0 (MPa)

1860

Shear Maximum Strain (%) Longitudinal Thermal Expansion Coefficient

2.435

Compressive Strength 90 (MPa)

250

-3x10-7

30

(10-6/0C)

Shear Modulus (GPa)

4.6

Transverse Thermal Expansion Longitudinal Moisture Expansion Coefficient Transverse Moisture Expansion Coefficient

3x10-5

Shear Strength (MPa)

120

0.0001

Major Poissons Ratio

0.3

0.2

Table 5 CFRP Material Properties (9)

The tack life of the prepreg plies used is up to 15 days when stored at 230C and the out life is 42 days at the same temperature. If the plies are stored at -180C then they have a shelf life of 12 months. Hexcel have successfully certified this material for use on primary structural components and a key reason behind choosing it was its high toughness as well its damage resistance properties. The skin of the aircraft will be manufactured from laminates comprised of these UD plies. The skin/stringer panels contribute more to the mass of the structure than any other one component on the aircraft. As such, it is hoped that by choosing CFRP materials the mass of the structure can be kept lower than would be possible using metallic alloys. The skin is a key structural member as it must support the aerodynamic loads applied by the atmospheric air. A composite skin can be manufactured to smoothly follow the complex curvature of the vehicle without being split into multiple panels as would likely be needed if the skins were made from metallic alloys. This has the benefit of both reducing the weight of the fasteners used in the structure and also improving the aerodynamics of the flow over the aircraft as the interfaces between such metallic panels as well as their fastening rivets form a significant contribution to skin drag. Also, the use of composite material could prove to be a cheaper option than manufacturing the skin from a metallic alloy as these materials will

31

likely see increased use between now and the aircrafts introduction to service. Finally the use of composite material and the corresponding reduction in joining surfaces can also reduce the frequency of maintenance inspections needed (10).

4.3 Aluminium Alloys

4.3.1 Introduction
While composites lend themselves to use on components where the loading is well defined, for components where the stress field is more complex metallic alloys remain the best choice of material due to their isotropic properties. Aluminium alloys, i.e. alloys whose primary constituent is Aluminium metal, are used very commonly in aerospace applications owing to their low density and high strength and stiffness. Titanium alloys are also used in aircraft as they possess even better specific stiffness than aluminium alloys but they are considerably more expensive and there are manufacturing difficulties involved with their use. As with composite materials there are a variety of options available to designers when it comes to choosing the aluminium alloy used for design purposes. Typically the 7000 series and 2000 series aluminium alloys are used for the design of aerospace structures.

4.3.2 Components Designed Using Aluminium Alloy and Materials Chosen

Aluminium alloys were chosen as the material for the design of the three spars passing through the front section of the mid-wing as well as the ribs within the section. Although composite materials would also have been a good material choice for the first and second spar, the author decided that aluminium alloys were definitely the most suitable materials for the design of the third spar. This is because, as well as serving as one of the main spars of the aircraft, the third spar also acts as the aft pressure bulkhead of the cargo bay. Furthermore the main landing gear connects to this spar and so considering the very complex 32

stress states which could arise due to the combination of these high intensity loads it was decided that the isotropic properties of alloy materials were desirable for the third spar. Composite materials were not suitable as determining a ply layup that suited such a complex loading situation would have proved very difficult if not impossible within the time constraints of the GDP. Once the decision had been taken to design the third spar using aluminium materials, the design process used for the third spar could be more easily repeated to design the first and second spars using aluminium alloys also rather than using composites for these components which would have required further research and different calculations owing to the anisotropy of the composite materials. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, the author wanted to design using aluminium alloys as well as composite materials in order to gain experience designing aircraft structures with both class of materials. After a discussion with the designer of the aft mid-wing, Mr. Julien Ertveldt, who had been working on the retraction of the main landing gear along with the designer of this component, it was pointed out that space in the main landing gear bay was very limited. In light of this the stiffness of the alloy material used was a key parameter as it would determine the deflection of the panels used in the bulkhead as well as the density of the material used as the bulkhead will be very large and have a significant weight penalty. After consulting various sources, the author decided upon the use of Al 2099 T-83 as this alloy possesses a lower density than other aluminium alloys and a high value of Youngs modulus. Below is a table showing the properties of Al 2099 T-83 These values were listed as being valid for thicknesses from 0.5 to 0.999 inches (12.7 to 25.375mm) which exceeded the maximum dimensions used in subsequent designs and so they are reflective of the true mechanical properties of the components (11):

Stiffness

78 GPa

33

Yield Strength Tensile Strength Compressive Yield Strength Density

525 MPa 560 MPa 520 MPa 2630 495.27 MPa 28 (GPa) 0.34 157.29

fn
Shear Modulus Poissons Ratio

Table 6 Al 2099 T-83 Material Properties (11)

4.4 Use of Titanium Alloys

Another class of metallic alloys commonly used in aerospace applications are those whose primary constituent metal is Titanium. Titanium alloys have a very high yield strength and bearing strength but their use comes at an additional weight penalty when compared to aluminium alloys. As a result, the use of titanium alloys on aircraft is generally reserved for only special applications such as components which must operate under unusually high stresses or temperatures. In addition, titanium alloys see application for connections made to CFRP composite materials as there is a galvanic difference between aluminium alloys and composites which must be insulated against in order to avoid excessive levels of corrosion. For the design of the forward mid-wing structure titanium alloys were chosen for the lugs which connect the outer wing and mid-wing sections together. This material choice was recommended by Dr. Xiang Zhang due to the high stress acting on the lugs and the cyclic nature of the load that will be applied. This will 34

be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8 on fatigue and damage tolerance analysis as one of these lugs was chosen as the component to focus on in particular for this section of the GDP.

35

5 Initial Sizing
5.1 Introduction
To being the process of designing the structure of the forward section of the mid-wing the thicknesses and general sizes of the individual components needed to be calculated. This was done based on values of shear force, bending moment and torque calculated in the loading analysis and utilising the theory in various sources but in particular Denis Howes book was used as reference material (6) as well as the Detail Stressing lecture series which were presented by Mr. Phil Stocking (12). The values determined in the initial sizing section represent a starting point in the design process from which more detailed design can be carried out. To determine the relevant values for thickness and to allow for easy adjustment to the design at a later stage if necessary the author constructed an Excel file for each of the required design tasks.

5.2 Leading Edge Thickness

The leading edge slat on the FW-12 starts out towards the tip of the wing and continues until the rib at a spanwise location of 11m from the centreline. Therefore the slat ends at the outboard wall of the cargo bay and so the entire leading edge of the mid-wing section is exposed to the ambient airflow during flight. According to CS 25.631 (2) the leading edge must be capable of surviving a collision with a 1.8kg bird while the aircraft is travelling at its cruise velocity and the aircraft must continue to operate safely. The required thickness of the leading edge could be determined from a semi-empirical formula derived by Howe in (6):

Equation 12

Where: t = thickness of leading edge (mm), r = radius of leading edge nose (mm), m = mass of the bird/impacting object (kg) , 36 = inclination of impact and

, i.e. 0.8 times the ratio of the 0.1% proof stress of the light alloy specification L73 and that of the composite material used for the leading edge. The formula used for sizing the leading edge is based on empirical methods and only gives an approximate value for the skin thickness required to allow the aircraft to continue to operate after the collision. To ensure that the aircraft does indeed meet the requirements for bird strikes as laid out in CS-25.631 tests would need to be carried out on manufactured prototypes of the FW-12 or making suitable comparisons to tests performed on other aircraft. The results of the initial sizing of the leading edge can be found in Appendix B.1.

5.3 Skin Stringer Panels

As the primary load direction for lifting surfaces is spanwise (6) the values of the bending moment calculated in the spanwise distribution were used to size the skin stringer panels. The wing of an aircraft can be simplified as a cantilever beam that is usually loaded such that the upper side is in compression and the lower in tension. For a beam subjected to a bending moment, the resulting stress levels are proportional to the distance from the neutral axis of the beam. As such, the stresses due to bending will be greatest in the upper and lower surfaces of the aircrafts wing and so the panels have been designed to fully support the bending moment. The most common loading conditions will occur during flight so the upper skin of the wing will be subjected to compressive stresses while the lower skin will be subjected to tensile loads. For the skins to be capable of supporting these loads, without being so thick as to have an excessively large mass, stiffeners termed stringers are attached to the skin which share the load with the skin material. One of the first sizing requirements was to calculate an initial estimate for the thicknesses of these stringer sections and the skin material. This was achieved by calculating an equivalent thickness which is representative of the total cross sectional area required of the panels to support the load. 37

Based on the theory outlined in Howes Aircraft Loading and Structural Layout the dimensions of the components could be estimated by considering the moment applied at a spanwise location of the wing, , and applying the usual

ultimate factor of 1.5 times this value. If this moment is taken to act through the central plane of a wingbox of average height balance this moment must be such that:
Equation 13

then the force required to

Using this value for

the value of

can be calculated as follows:

Equation 14

where: A is a material constant,

is the buckling efficiency factor of the

panels construction based on the type of stringer being used, W is the width of the wingbox and L is the rib pitch. Using this value of , the equivalent thickness of the skin stringer panel

required to support this stress level can be calculated using the following equation:
Equation 15

This thickness essentially represents a measure of the cross sectional area required to support the applied load safely. In order to get a more detailed idea of the approximate thicknesses of the skin it is suggested that the skin thickness be initially taken as:
Equation 16

The effective thickness required varied along the span of the aircraft due to the variation in both the bending moment applied and the height of the wing box by which the moment must be resisted. This variation of the effective thickness is illustrated below: 38

The critical design cases differ depending on the side of the wing being considered. For the upper surface the tendency to buckle under the applied compression load needs to be considered and prevented. If buckling were to occur, this could disrupt the aerodynamic surface and have drastic effects on the aircrafts performance as well as lead to the overall failure of the structure. Once the initial estimate for the thickness of the skin was decided upon, the buckling analysis was carried out on the skin-stringer panels. This will be discussed further in the detailed design chapter. On conventional aircraft wings the skin thickness required to support the bending loads is greatest at the root of the wing and can be reduced along the span of the wing in order to reduce the aircraft mass. However, this is not the case on the FW-12 through the mid-wing section due to the transition from one aerofoil shape to another across the region. This results in a rapid reduction in the height of the wingbox and in turn an increase in the load which the panels are subjected to despite the reduction in applied bending moment. The panels of the wingbox also need to have sufficient thickness to support the shear stresses resulting from the torque applied to the structure. Due to the large wingbox area in the mid-wing section it was suspected that the deciding factor for the skin thickness would be the loads due to the bending moment rather than the torsional loads, however, this needed to be double checked. Using the Bredt-Batho theory, the thickness required to support the shear stress due to torque can be estimated using the following formula:
Equation 17

where T is the torque applied to the wingbox, A is the wingbox area and

is

the shear strength of the material, taken to be half of the ultimate tensile strength of the material. Finally the wingbox must have a minimum thickness to resist flutter. To ensure that the thickness required to support the bending loads is sufficient, and also

39

resistant to flutter,the following equation is used, again based on the BredtBatho theory: where is the thickness required,
Equation 18

is the torsional stiffness at 0.7 half-span, is the

G is the shear modulus of the material, A is the wingbox area and mean perimeter.

It was found that by far the most critical design case was ensuring that the panels could support the loads due to bending owing to the large wingbox area of the mid-wing section and so the detailed design of the skin stringer panels was based on this criterion. The initial estimates for the required equivalent skin thickness based on the three separate load cases are shown below:
5.0000 4.5000 4.0000 3.5000 3.0000 2.5000 2.0000 1.5000 1.0000 0.5000 0.0000 5.0000 6.0000 7.0000 8.0000 9.0000 10.0000 11.0000 Skin Thickness due to Torque Wing Bending Skin Thickness Thickness to resist flutter

Figure 10 Skin thickness requirements

5.4 Spar Sizing

The locations of the main ribs and spars which support the structure of the FW12 had previously been decided by all members of the wing team and were outlined in the initial structural layout section. The ends of the spars followed the inner surface of the skins which meant that their height was fixed and so to 40

ensure that the applied stresses were not too high, the thickness of the spars needed to be calculated. To determine an initial estimate for the required thickness, the minimum thickness was calculated such that the shear stress developed in the cross section was less than the shear strength of the material. However, while the spars would be able to support the applied loads this resulting shear stress could cause the web of the spars to buckle in shear. This will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter on the detail sizing and design of the structural components. The shear force had been calculated over the whole span of the aircraft. However, only a single value of shear force for each point along the span could be calculated. In reality, the force would be carried by all of the spars present in the wing at the specific location. In the mid wing there are four spars and according to reference (6), the shear force carried by each member can be approximated by considering the heights of each of the spars. The level to with each member will be loaded can be estimated by using the following equation:
Equation 19

where

is the ultimate shear force at the relevant spanwise location, is the height of the spars and

is the is the

shear force in each individual spar, number of spars.

This shear force will produce a shear flow within the webs of the spars which they must be able to react. Furthermore the torque applied to the wingbox will also result in a shear flow in the webs of the spars. The two contributions to the shear flow in the spar webs can be evaluated as:

where

is the shear flow due to the shear force applied,

is the shear flow

due to the torque applied and

is the thickness of the spar being examined.

41

These shear flows will result in shear stresses being developed in the spar webs and so a preliminary estimate for the thickness required of the webs can be found by finding the thickness at which this shear stress is below the shear yield strength of the material. The shear stress can be evaluated as follows:
Equation 20

It should be noted that due to the five spar configuration of the wingbox in the mid-wing section it was not possible to determine the exact shear flow caused by the loads applied and so some assumptions had to be made. The shear flow due to the torque applied has been calculated using the method usually used for two spar configurations where the front and rear spar react the torsional shear flow. The resulting value of shear flow due to the torque has then been assumed to act on all the spars at a given spanwise location equally. In reality the five spar configuration leads to a statically indeterminate situation and would require further simulation using finite element analysis to more accurately predict the shear flows and corresponding shear stresses which each spar must react.

5.5 Bulkhead Sizing

There was no clear cut method to determine an initial value for the thicknesses required for the pressure bulkheads of the cargo bay area. Instead the sizes of the bulkheads were determined in more detail using ESDU data sheet 71013 which will be discussed in more detail in the detail design section.

5.6 Rib Sizing

Similarly there is not much theory to base initial predictions for the dimensions of the ribs on. The ribs were designed in more detail based on the chordwise distribution of the load applied to the components. However, there is a simple method to estimate the rib pitch required for maintenance purposes given in Howes book. The relevant equation is:

42

 where wing. The above method for estimating the rib pitch is based on maintenance considerations, specifically so that maintenance workers can fit through maintenance hatches between the ribs and visually inspect the internal structure. However for the mid-wing section this approximation gives quite large values of the required rib pitch due to the very large height of the wingbox at the root of the FW-12 which corresponds to the centreline of the aircraft. In practice a rib pitch of approximately 800mm proves sufficient for maintenance purposes and this value is usually recommended as a minimum. However a number of the ribs in the mid-wing section were spaced below this minimum value so some maintenance holes were then placed in the webs of the ribs of the section to facilitate the inspection of the structure. This will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. is the rib pitch and is the depth of the wingbox at the root of the

5.7 Light Frames

The initial sizing of the light frames was done based on theory provided in reference (6). It is recommended that the height of the frames is taken as 3-5% of the diameter of the fuselage and that their thickness be equal to the equivalent thickness calculated for the skins. However the method for estimating the frame height proved ineffective and led to very large frame heights as it assumes a cylindrical fuselage as found in conventional airliners. In order to use this assumption for the FW-12, the local curvature of the mid-wing section was measured. The approximate diameter of the aerodynamic surface was estimated from the CATIA model to be approximately 28m which indicates the height of the frames should be between 840mm to 1400mm. These values were deemed too high and so, after consulting with Mr. Phil Stocking, the author opted to base the size of the frames on the diameter of the A380 aircraft as this aircraft has a very large fuselage diameter and so it is comparable to the large 43

diameters found on the FW-12. Based on this assumption, the height of the frames was found to be 320mm and the thickness was equal to the previously calculated value of .

44

6 Detail Design
6.1 Introduction
The initial sizing stage of the design served to determine the approximate dimensions of the various structural components of the design. Once these values had been determined, the design of the components could be taken forward to the more detailed design phase where more precise dimensions were calculated taking various factors into consideration, these included: Manufacturing considerations such as the tolerances which would be applicable for the finished components Use of commonly available sheet thicknesses where appropriate rather than the exactly calculated value Considering all the methods of failure which the component could encounter and ensuring that the stress experienced by the structure under ultimate load would not lead to any of these failure modes. The calculations performed to determine the dimensions of the components are discussed here along with some results and full details of this work can be found in the Detail Stressing Report in Appendix E.

6.2 Skin Stringer Panel Design

6.2.1 Introduction
As outlined in the previous section the first estimate for the skin thickness was determined by calculating an effective thickness required for the skins to react the forces due to the bending moment. Once this was determined the process of designing the skin stringer panels was continued using the in-house software programme TW Panels. For both the upper and lower panels the critical loading case was found to be when the panels are loaded in compression. Therefore the most severe loading due to a 2.5g pull up manoeuvre was used to determine the dimensions of the 45

upper panel and for the lower panels a -1g pitching case was the worst case considered and both of these cases were combined with the loads from rolling manoeuvres. The task then became to design the panels to ensure that they had sufficient strength to support the ultimate applied loads without buckling.

6.2.2 Buckling Analysis using TW Panels

The panels were considered to be simply supported at one end by a rib and at the other by a light frame. Due to their size the panels represent the most significant contribution to the overall mass of the mid-wing structure and indeed of the entire FW-12 aircraft, in light of this a significant amount of time was spent designing the dimensions of the panels in order to maximise the weight savings. Two different possible designs were derived; the optimal design of the panels which had the lowest possible mass while still being capable of supporting the loads applied and the final design of the panels which took manufacturing and maintenance restraints into consideration despite this resulting in a weight penalty. This allows for a comparison between the two designs and gives a measure of the largest weight savings which could be made in subsequent design iterations. TW panels requires some input data to be given to compute the dimensions of the panels and the loads which could be supported before buckling would occur. One input which was required was a Youngs modulus value for the material used. In the case of aluminium panels this value could be easily obtained, however for composite materials it is more difficult to assign a single value to the material for the purposes of sizing calculations. The author consulted with Dr. Shijun Guo about this problem and the advice given was to assume the Youngs modulus for a quasi-isotropic layup to be between 65GPa and 70GPa. To be conservative in the design of the panels, the lower limit value of 65GPa was used in the TW Panels software. Below is a sample of the results obtained from the programme:

46

Figure 11 Finalised Upper Panel Sizing Data from TW Panels

The programme returned the dimensions of a skin/stringer panel and the buckling load that could be supported by the panel. To determine if this panel would be suitable for the FW-12 aircraft skin the value of bending moment at the specified spanwise position was used to determine the force acting through the skins:
Equation 21

The dimensions returned by TW Panels were then used to calculate the area of the panel and so with the load and area over which it is applied known as the average applied stress within the panel could then be evaluated: 47

Equation 22

The dimensions of the panel were then adjusted until the applied stress was below the value for buckling stresses calculated by TW panels. There are two modes of buckling which have to be designed against in the case of aircraft skins both of which are considered by TW Panels, namely global buckling of the entire skin/stringer panel and local buckling of the individual components. The panel may be strengthened, at the cost of increased mass, to resist one form of buckling but this may not improve the panels ability to resist the other form of buckling. This means that the minimum possible mass of the panels will coincide with when the panels values for local and global buckling stress are equal. TW panels was used to calculate the dimensions at which the two stress values were equal and hence the lightest possible panel configuration for the individual panels was found. However, TW panels returned a different value of stringer pitch for the optimal design configuration of each panel. This would result in most of or nearly all of the stringers across the aircraft having to be broken at the ends of each panel and as a result the structure would prove to be very inefficient and likely fail under the ultimate applied loads. To solve this problem the stringer pitch value for the most critically loaded panel was used for all the panels across the aircraft and the corresponding weight penalty was calculated.

6.2.3 Maintenance Considerations

Despite the structure now having quite a low mass, there were other design requirements which had to be taken into consideration, namely that the optimised value of stringer pitch was quite low, approximately 74mm. This led to a large number of stringers being required across the wingbox and, while this allowed for a low value of skin thickness to be used, the low stringer pitch meant that the maintainability of the mid-wing section would be compromised as it may have proved difficult to inspect the stringers for any damage and also to repair or replace any that had been damaged. After again discussing this design 48

problem with Dr. Shijun Guo the author resolved to decide upon a stringer pitch more suitable for maintenance purposes of 150mm, to keep this value constant across the mid-wing section and redesign the panels based on this new value. This meant that the local and global buckling stress were no longer equal so instead the lowest value of buckling stress was used as the design criterion. The results for the thicknesses of the panels are summarised below:

Stringer Pitch

Skin Thickness Stringer Thickness

Total mass 1305kg 1546kg

First Iteration Second Iteration Final Design (upper) Final Design (lower) Final Design

Variable 74mm

Variable 2.35mm

Variable 1.38mm

150mm

3.6mm

3.12mm

1235kg

150mm

2.8mm

2.8mm

901kg

150mm

2137kg

Therefore, it can be seen that using a larger and constant stringer pitch to facilitate the maintenance of the structure comes at a significant weight penalty of 63.7% when compared to the first iteration of the design. However, as discussed this design represents the optimal configuration if each panel was an isolated component loaded separately from the others. This is not reflective of how the panels are used on the aircraft. Therefore a fairer comparison can be made between the final designs mass of 2137kg and the mass of the second 49

set of panels designed which had a mass of 1546kg. The weight penalty is therefore 38.23% which is still significant but unavoidable as the pitch of 150mm used was the minimum recommended by Dr. Guo in light of maintenance considerations.

6.2.4 Skin Pressurisation

The skins also had to be designed to adequately support the loads arising from the pressure differential between the cargo bay area and the external conditions during flight. To ensure compliance with the relevant CS.25 requirements the skins were designed to withstand twice the expected operating pressure differential. The maximum altitude which the FW-12 is designed to operate at is 42,000ft and the cabin altitude was set by the designer of the Environmental Control System at 6,000ft. Based on the international standard atmosphere pressure values at these altitudes the pressure differential across the aircrafts skin is 64,164Pa, therefore the structure was designed to withstand a pressure of 128,328Pa. To determine the deflections and stresses in the skin panels ESDU data sheet number 71013 was used. The skins were considered to be attached to the flanges of the ribs and frames and simply supported by the stringers. The analysis conducted was the same as that done when designing the pressure bulkheads and is described in more detail in the section on the spar design. It was found that the skin thicknesses required to react the wing bending loads meant that the skins were more than capable of supporting the pressure loads with reserve factors of greater than two being calculated when the resulting stresses were compared with the ply failure stresses. Full details of the pressure analysis can be found in the Detail Stressing Report in Appendix E.

6.2.5 Results and Composite Layups Chosen

Once the thickness of the components had been calculated the layups of the composite plies used to manufacture each component could be decided. The layups were chosen from those listed in ESDU 82013, entitled Laminate 50

Stacking Sequences for Special Orthotropy (13). Using these layups ensured that the distortion during manufacture was kept to a minimum as the bending and twisting moments as well as the end load and shear loads which the laminate experiences are all uncoupled. The dimensions of the manufactured panels will differ slightly from those analysed using TW Panels because the plies used each have a fixed thickness of 0.184mm. The exact number of plies needed to achieve the calculated thicknesses was determined and then rounded up to the next whole number rather than rounded down to ensure that the manufactured panels were not weaker than those designed. In the Detail Stressing Report in Appendix E the theoretical panel dimensions are used and so the reserve factors calculated in the report represent a conservative estimate of the panels ability to support the applied loads. Below are the layups chosen for the skin and stringers in the upper and lower panels:

No. of plies Upper Skin Upper Stringer Lower Skin Lower Stringer 16 16 17 20

Layup Chosen

ESDU Ref. No

Manufactured Thickness 3.68mm

[-45/0/-452/90/02/452/-45]s

S27

[45/-45/90/0/-45/02/45]s [0]

S50

3.128mm

[45/-452/0/452/-45/90]s

S8

2.944mm

[45/-45/0/-45/0/45/90/0]s

S5

2.944mm

Table 7 Ply Layups for Skin/Stringer Panels

51

The layups for the stringers were chosen such that there were a large number of plies aligned along the axis of loading (0o) i.e. in the spanwise direction. This was so that the stringers could better support the compressive and tensile loads to which they are subjected. The layups for the skins were chosen due to the high number of plies which are aligned at either 45 or -45 degrees to better support any shear stresses they are subjected to. All layups chosen still have at least 10% of the plies aligned normal and parallel to the loading axis as recommended in the lecture series on composite materials (14). The material properties for the individual plies which were presented in Chapter 4 were entered into the in-house software CoALA along with the layups chosen and the resulting material properties for the laminates were calculated. A sample of the results obtained as well as the file input to the software can be found in Appendix D. Finally, it should be noted that in manufacturing the skin stringer panels, a copper wire mesh should be included as the first ply in the layup. This is to protect the structure from the damage, which would be caused during a lightning strike. The mesh will conduct the electric current and dissipate it around the aircraft as occurs when metallic skins are used. This is to ensure that the structure meets the requirements of CS 25.581 and in particular, section (c)(2), which states that non-metallic components must have a means of diverting the resulting electrical current so as not to endanger the aeroplane (2).

6.3 Detailed Spar Design

6.3.1 Introduction
The critical design case for the spars of the aircraft was ensuring that the web of the spars were sufficiently thin in order to keep their mass to a minimum but thick enough to not buckle in shear under the applied loads. To calculate the 52

required thicknesses the spar of the web was assumed to behave like a number of rectangular plates loaded in shear with the dimensions of the plate being determined by the pitch of the horizontal stiffeners and of the ribs and frames to which the spar was attached. The calculations were performed using data from ESDU data sheet number 71005 entitled Buckling of Flat Plates in Shear (15).

6.3.2 Shear Buckling Analysis

To determine the buckling stress, first the buckling coefficient K needed to be found. This is a function of the pitch between the vertical and horizontal stiffeners which supported the spar sections. The horizontal stiffeners were attached to the web of the spars at a pitch of 300mm while the vertical support was provided by attaching the spars to the flanges of the ribs and the light frames. Thus, the parameter b was constant and equal to 300mm and the parameter a was equal to the distance between the rib and frame supporting the web, which varied slightly from one location to another. As the shorter sides of the rectangular plates were bolted to the flanges of the ribs and frames, the curve on Figure 1 of ESDU 71005 corresponding to a plate whose shorter sides are clamped was used. Once the value of K had been determined, the stress which would cause the spar web to buckle could be calculated:

( )
where

Equation 23

is the Youngs modulus of the material,

is the web thickness and

is

the length of the shorter side of the plate. This stress value is based on a value for K determined from data from experiments using materials with a value of Poissons ratio material used for the spars, 2099 T-83, the value of this the stress is multiplied by the following factor:
Equation 24

of 0.33. For the

is 0.34. To account for

So that: 53

Equation 25

represents the elastic shear buckling stress for the panels, however, depending on the spar thickness, the stress required to make the panels buckle could be high enough that plasticity plays an important role in the buckling. Hence the value of is compared to the value of of the material to

determine the plasticity reduction factor using Figure 2 of ESDU 71005. It was found that the thicknesses required of the spars were sufficiently small that the buckling stress would not cause appreciable plastic deformation to the plates and hence the plasticity reduction factor was found to have a value of 1 for all the cases considered. So the buckling stress for the plate, of as calculated above. equalled the value

To ensure that the spar webs would not buckle, the applied stress had to be less than the calculated value of . As shown in the previous chapter, the

shear stress applied to the spars was calculated as follows:

The thickness of the spar webs was set as the minimum value which satisfied the condition of being less than .

6.3.3 Pressurisation Analysis

Both the third spar and the most outboard rib in the mid-wing section had to act as pressure bulkheads to maintain the pressure differential between the cargo bay and the external conditions during flight. The analysis of the bulkhead loads was identical for both of these components and also for checking that the skin/stringer panels could support the pressure loads, only the geometrical values and loads differed. As mentioned in the previous chapter, there was no method for determining the initial sizes for the bulkheads. Instead their thicknesses were determined by using ESDU 71013 entitled Elastic direct stresses deflections for flat 54

rectangular plates under uniformly distributed normal pressure (18). The rectangular plates which are considered to deform are again those formed between the horizontal stiffeners and vertical attachments to the flanges of the ribs and frames and once again the ratio of these sides was a key parameter in analysing the stresses due to the applied loads. To provide rigid support, the bulkhead is attached to the flanges of the ribs using bolts as well as being attached to the flanges of the light frames between the ribs. The horizontal stiffeners are attached to the opposite side of the bulkhead so that they are not interrupted by the connection to the ribs and frames. In the case of the skin/stringer panels the dimensions of the plates were determined by the stringer pitch and distance between the ribs and frames. The lines where the various stiffening members support the third spar bulkhead have been projected onto the spars body to indicate the geometry of the pressurised panels and are shown in the image below:

Figure 12: Third Spar and Stiffener Geometry

It was assumed that the edges of the panels were free in translation and fixed in rotation and then, by using Figures 2, 7 and 8 of ESDU 71013, it was possible 55

to determine the deflection and stresses which arise in the bulkheads due to the pressure differential. The thickness of the bulkheads as well as the geometry of the stiffeners could then be adjusted until acceptable stress and deflection levels were achieved. To determine the thickness required of the bulkhead the largest rectangular panel was considered. The spacing between each of the ten horizontal stiffeners was constant at 300mm and the largest distance between a rib and light frame was 412.5mm. This meant the largest of the rectangular plates would have a value of a = 0.4125m and b = 0.3m. Based on these values the maximum deflection and various stresses in the panels could be calculated, the detailed calculations on the bulkhead sizing can be found in Appendix E. As described earlier the bulkhead is vertically stiffened by being bolted to the ribs and frames and also stiffened by horizontal stiffeners on the aft side of the panel. The horizontal stiffeners are integrally machined into the bulkhead and the thickness of the bulkhead is kept constant at the value calculated for the largest panels rather than varying the thickness for the local stresses and deflections.

6.3.4 Spar Caps

The skins of the aircraft had been designed to withstand the wing bending loads on their own while the spars had been designed to withstand the shear loads due to the aerodynamic loading. As a result the spar caps, which were designed later on in the project, are not absolutely necessary in order to support these loads, rather they provide some redundancy to the structure as they are designed to take a portion of the load which the panels can take on their own. Furthermore the spar caps also stabilise the spars by providing attachment points to the aircrafts skins. The spar caps are L-shaped and placed at the top and bottom of the spar webs forming C-shaped spars. The proportion of the total force applied which acts through the spar caps is assumed to be equal to the ratio of their area to the area of the spar caps and the panels combined:

56

To make manufacturing the spars much easier, the thickness of the spar caps is equal to the thickness of the webs. As a result, the spar caps can be manufactured from the same sheet of material as the webs by bending the ends of the metal to the required angle. Note that this angle is not necessarily 90 degrees as the spar caps have been designed to follow the inside of the aerodynamic surface and therefore the angle varies along the length of the spars. The dimensions of the spar caps are as shown below:

Figure 13 Spar Cap Dimensions

6.3.5 Results and Discussion

Based on the loads discussed in this section the thickness of the spars and the dimensions of the stiffeners used to support them were calculated to ensure that reserve factors above one were achieved for all failure cases. The calculated value of the spar thicknesses is summarised below:

57

Spar Number First Spar Second Spar Third Spar

Web Thickness (mm) 2.9 3.1 3.25

Table 8 Web Thicknesses for forward mid-wing spars

The pitch of the horizontal stiffeners was 300mm for all three of the spars and as the spars are vertically stiffened by attachment to the ribs and frames the pitch of the vertical reinforcements was determined by their spanwise locations. The thicknesses shown in the above table were the thicknesses required to ensure that the webs would not buckle in shear due to the loads applied at the most critically loaded section of the spars. For other sections of the spars the loading was less severe and slightly smaller thicknesses could be used. Furthermore the thickness of the third spar was found to be slightly smaller than 3.25mm but this thickness was chosen to facilitate the manufacture of the spar, this is discussed in further detail in the section of this chapter entitled Manufacturing Considerations.

6.4 Rib Design

6.4.1 Introduction
The ribs of an aircraft are designed to meet a number of functions and roles as they are responsible for transmitting the aerodynamic forces produced by the lifting surfaces to the rest of the structure as well as maintaining the shape of the aerofoil which produces these forces. The ribs in the mid-wing section ran parallel to the centre line of the aircraft and required large cut-outs through their webs to allow for the cargo bay section. For the purposes of the GDP one heavy rib and one light rib are chosen to be designed in detail. A light rib is the term given to a rib which only needs to carry 58

air loads and a heavy rib is one that has an additional high intensity load applied to it such as when connected to the landing gear of the aircraft or to a trailing edge device. Although all of the ribs in the mid-wing are technically heavy ribs as they have to support the weight of the cargo carried by the aircraft a light rib has been designed by assuming these loads to be negligible. The total mass of the cargo carried by the aircraft is 3937kg which is split between the two cargo bays and then supported by the six ribs in each section so each rib has to support only one twelfth of this weight so the loads applied are quite small. Furthermore a significant proportion of the cargo will be carried as carry-on luggage in the cabin so the loads are even smaller still and therefore neglecting these loads in order to meet the GDP requirements of designing a light rib was deemed to be reasonable.

6.4.2 Rib flange design

6.4.2.1 Aft Pressure Bulkhead Connection Flanges The design of the ribs was slowed by the major delay in calculation of the chordwise distribution of the loads applied to the aircraft. Without this data it was not possible to size the thickness of the web of the ribs. Instead, focus was first paid to designing the flanges of the ribs as it was to these flanges that the aft pressure bulkhead, spars and aerodynamic surfaces would be attached. The aft flanges were designed to provide connection points for the bulkhead. The force which the connection must withstand is comprised of two components. Firstly the pressure difference between the pressurised cargo bay and the external conditions acting over the surface area of the bulkhead will result in a force and secondly the same pressure difference will act on the interior of the aerodynamic surface to which the ribs are also attached and this will result in a force acting in the opposite direction to act on the connection:

59

To estimate the force acting on the aerodynamic shell its area was measured from the CATIA model and it was then approximated to be a half cylinder of equivalent area to the actual shell:

To help visualise the procedure used for calculating the loads, the actual pressurised skin area considered and the half cylinder with equivalent area are shown in the following image:

Figure 14 Pressurised Skin Section and Equivalent Cylinder

The width of the mid-wing section (L) is 5.4m so, knowing this, the diameter (d) of the equivalent cylinder was found to be 11.372m. The force due to the pressurisation of the shell can then be estimated as the force produced by the pressure acting over a rectangle measuring 5.4m by 11.37m:

So the total force which the connection must support is:

Several designs were then considered as there are numerous bolt sizes available. Eventually a design which was able to support the load was finished consisting of 4BA bolts spaced 5.6 diameters apart along the flanges of the rib. However this design was then decided against as it is recommended to not use 60

bolts with diameters smaller than approximately 6mm for structural design purposes. This is because a maintenance worker would typically have sufficient strength to over-tighten a bolt with a diameter smaller than 6mm and if this were to occur damage would be done to the threads of the bolt which would compromise their strength. In light of this the design process was repeated using inch diameter bolts as this is the recommended minimum bolt diameter for structural design purposes (17). Using these bolts the connection was sized to ensure that the flanges would not buckle under the applied load. The interfastener buckling stress could be calculated as shown: ( )
Equation 26

where K is the fixity coefficient of the fasteners used, flanges, is the fastener pitch and

is the thickness of the

is the fastener diameter.

The thickness of the flanges and pitch of bolts required to ensure that the flanges did not buckle could therefore be calculated. For a flange thickness of 4.5mm the maximum pitch between the bolts was found to be slightly larger than with the previous design at 5.75D which meant that a total of 1056 bolts were used. However this is twice the number of bolts that are needed to hold the calculated load due to pressure. By increasing the flange thickness to 6.2mm the pitch of the bolts could be increased to the recommended maximum value of 8D which allowed for the minimum number of bolts to be used for the connection. This reduced the weight of the structure as significantly fewer fasteners would be needed but this, as always, involved a trade-off with an increase in weight due to the thicker flanges. Overall though this design should prove to be lighter and will involve less maintenance as fewer fasteners are used to secure the flanges to the aft pressure bulkhead. The width of the flanges was then decided based on the recommended minimum distance from a free edge of a plate to the centreline of a fastener of 61

2D. This minimum value is used to reduce the risk of cracking or tearing of the plate under the applied loads and so the width of the flanges was set at four times the bolt diameter or 25.4mm, i.e. one inch. 6.4.2.2 Upper and Lower Rib Flanges Originally it was hoped that the connection could be made using MS20426 rivets which are the most commonly used rivet type for attaching the skin of an aircraft to the supporting structure (20). These rivets are countersunk so that their upper surface is flush with the aircraft skin and they form a 100 0 penetration angle with the skin of the aircraft. However, it is not good design practice to load rivets in tensile loads and so this should be avoided whenever possible. In the case of conventional aircraft the pressurisation of the fuselage results in hoop stresses in the skin, which act to deform the skin such that the circumference will increase and this change in circumferential length manifests itself as shear loading on the rivets which attach the skin to the structure. As the rivets are loaded in shear under these conditions they are efficient at supporting the applied loads. However, yet another consequence of the pressurisation of the non-cylindrical fuselage of the FW-12 is that the rivets used to attach the skin are predominantly loaded in tension owing to the fuselage consisting of much flatter surfaces. The author consulted Mr. Phil Stocking on advice on how to deal with this problem and was advised that the acceptable tensile load which could be applied to the rivets could be taken as one tenth of their maximum strength in shear. The force acting on the aerodynamic shell due to the pressurisation had already been calculated when designing the flanges of the rib which connect to the aft pressure bulkhead. It was estimated that the total pressure load acted equally on both the upper and lower skin panels and so each set of rivets had to withstand half of the applied load. It was found, under the assumption of the rivets being able to support one tenth of their shear strength in tension, that it would not be possible to use rivets to react the pressure load as the number of rivets needed exceeded that which could be fit through the flanges. 62

The upper and lower flanges of the ribs are therefore attached to the skins of the aircraft using countersunk bolts. The flanges are cut to allow the stringers to pass through and each section of the flange has three bolts passing through. For composite materials, it is recommended that the maximum pitch of 9D be used when fastening pressurised skin sections to the supporting structure in order to minimise the number of holes cut through the skin (19). Three equally spaced bolts are used in each flange section to ensure that this 9D pitch is achieved and again the bolts are located such that there is the minimum required distance of 2D between their centrelines and the free edges of the flange plates. The skin connection flanges of the ribs are shown below:

Figure 15 Rib/Skin Connection Geometry

Knowing the required pitch of the bolts, the total number of fasteners used in the connection is easily calculated. Based on the number of bolts required and the load applied, the bolts used in the connection must have a tensile strength of 1.996kN. Based on this value any of the bolts listed in the Detail Stressing courses stressing data sheets would be easily capable of supporting the load. However to ensure that the bolt pitch is 9D, a bolt of 6.35mm diameter is required and countersunk 1/4 UNF bolts are suitable. Due to the delay in the calculation of the chordwise load distributions the thickness required of the flanges to resist buckling under the applied bending moment remains as work to be done. The method of calculating this thickness however is the same as that presented earlier for the flanges which connect to 63

the aft bulkhead and the thicknesses would have been determined using this procedure had more time been available.

6.4.3 Rib Webs

Eventually the delay in the calculation of the chordwise load distribution led to the author having to determine this data for the mid-wing section himself as it was needed to complete the design of the ribs. The method for calculating the required values took some time to determine as thought had not previously been given to how to calculate the data as the author was not assigned to do this task. The method used in calculating this data and designing the ribs accordingly is described below. The procedure for designing the webs is described for the light rib but the same method was employed for the design of the heavy rib, the only difference being that there were additional loads considered for the heavy rib. The rib is strengthened by vertical and horizontal stiffeners which assist the web in resisting shear buckling. There were two horizontal stiffeners and a total of 45 vertical stiffeners machined along the entire length of the rib. To begin the sizing of the light rib the air load which would be applied to it was calculated by determining the difference in shear force which occurred at half the rib pitch on either side of the rib from the loading envelope, the value of this load was found to be 51,887N. According to reference (6), the shape of the pressure distribution across an aerofoil can be approximated as being characterised by a quadratic equation in terms of the normalised length of the chord:
Equation 27

The constants a, b and c can be determined based on the assumptions that the pressure at the trailing edge is zero, the integral of the end of a unit chord (i.e. at with respect to from 0 to

= 1) is unity and the moment of the area under

64

that curve about the origin is equal to the value of the centre of pressure (6). This leads to the equation:

Equation 28

A single value of the centre of pressure location is required for this equation, however the centre of pressure varies across the mid-wing section and so was assumed to be at a quarter of the local chord length from the leading edge. This is usually a good approximation for subsonic aerofoils, so for
Equation 29

This gave the overall shape of the pressure distribution which could then be scaled accordingly so that it gave the loading along the chord of the rib. Below is the distribution of the airload applied to the light rib situated at 9.725m outboard:

Chordwise Load Distribution for Light Rib

12000 10000 Air Load (N/m) 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 Chord Length (m) 12 14 16

Figure 16 Chordwise Load Distribution for Light Rib

65

To ensure that the distribution had the correct magnitude the graph was scaled so that the integral of the curve shown above along the length of the chord was equal to the total value of the force which the rib would be subjected to. Next it was required to determine the shear force and bending moment diagrams for the rib based on the above load distribution. Methods of calculating these data had been presented by Mr. Phil Stocking in the Detail Stressing lecture series (14). However, the methods presented were most applicable to conventional aircraft wing boxes consisting of no more than three spars. On the FW-12 the wing-box consists of 6 spars in some places and essentially incorporates the entire aircraft. This meant that an alternative method of calculating the required data was needed and so the Strand7 finite element software package (21) was used to determine the required shear loads and bending moments. The calculated air load distribution was applied to a model representing the rib which consisted of a series of beam elements the total length of which was equal to the actual rib length and the height of which was the average height of the rib. The resulting shear force and bending moment diagrams are shown below and a detailed description of their derivation can be found in Appendix C

66

Light Rib Shear Force Distribution

1.50E+04 1.00E+04 5.00E+03 Shear Force (N) 0.00E+00 0 -5.00E+03 -1.00E+04 -1.50E+04 -2.00E+04 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Chordwise Location (m)

Figure 17 Light Rib Chordwise Shear Force Distribution

Light Rib Bending Moment Distribution

1.20E+04 1.00E+04 Bending Moment (Nm) 8.00E+03 6.00E+03 4.00E+03 2.00E+03 0.00E+00 -2.00E+03 -4.00E+03 -6.00E+03 Chordwise Location (m) 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Figure 18 Light Rib Chordwise Bending Moment Distribution

Once this data had been calculated the rib could be designed to support the applied loads.

67

6.4.4 Rib Design Requirements

6.4.4.1 Web Shear Buckling The thickness of the webs of the ribs was determined in a similar fashion to those of the spars as the loading cases are similar, i.e. the webs of both components are loaded in shear. The ribs are loaded as they transmit the air loads to the spars and this produces a shear stress, which if above a certain value, will cause the web to buckle. So the required thickness of the rib webs is the value at which the ultimate applied maximum loads will not cause them to buckle. The methodology is the same as that outlined in designing the spar webs and involved using ESDU 71005 to determine the buckling stress of for the webs. The web is again considered to consist of numerous rectangular plates loaded in shear and the dimensions of the plates are defined as the distance between one of the horizontal stiffeners and a free edge of the web in one direction and the pitch of the vertical stiffeners in the other. The vertical stiffeners are added to the rib web to ensure that it can support the crushing force applied due to the bending of the wing, commonly referred to as the Brazier Loads and also to adjust the size of plates loaded in shear and thereby improve the webs ability to resist shear buckling. These plates are considered to be simply supported along their sides which differs from the spar design where the shorter sides were considered clamped because they were bolted to the flanges along these sides. 6.4.4.2 Brazier Loads When an aircraft wing generates upward lift the upper surface is put under compression and the lower surface under tension. This implies that there is a compressive deformation between the two surfaces through the plane of the ribs webs and this deformation leads to forces in the webs which could cause them to fail by buckling which would in turn ruin the aerodynamic shape of the wing. To prevent this from occurring vertical stiffeners are added to the rib. The stiffeners are spaced along the length of the rib and their pitch determines the width of the plate loaded in shear. In designing these stiffeners it has been 68

conservatively assumed that they react all of the compressive load when, in reality, the web itself will also react some of the load. A method of evaluating the magnitude of the Brazier loads is given by Niu in Airframe Stress Analysis and Sizing (20) whereby the crushing pressure can be estimated as:
Equation 30

where

the ultimate load intensity (N/m),

equivalent skin

thickness, E = skins Youngs modulus and vertical stiffener.

is the average height of the

Once this crushing pressure has been determined and assuming that the stiffeners take the entire resulting load, the stress which each stiffener is subjected to can be calculated:
Equation 31

where L is the rib pitch (m), c is the chord length (m), n is the number of vertical stiffeners and A is the stiffener area (m2) This stress can then be compared to the Euler buckling stress for the stiffeners to ensure that they can take the load without failing due to buckling: ( where ) is the buckling length of the

is the tangent modulus of the material,

stiffeners, and k is the radius of gyration of the stiffeners. The design of the rib could be varied by adjusting the dimensions of the stiffeners. If the cross sectional area of the stiffeners was increased then fewer were needed but this would increase the area of the panels which the buckling analysis was performed on. The finalised design consists of a total of 45 69

stiffeners and based on the resulting plate geometry the web thickness for the light rib was found to be 2mm.This is the recommended minimum thickness based on the capability of machining techniques (19) and 45 stiffeners were used so that this thickness could be achieved as this led to the lightest achievable rib design. The details of the design calculations can be found in the Detail Stressing report in the appendices. 6.4.4.3 Horizontal Stiffeners The flanges of the rib are cut to allow for the stringers to pass through which in turn means that the flanges cannot support the bending moment applied to the ribs. For this reason, horizontal stiffeners are also machined into the ribs. The horizontal stiffeners are sized in order to take the bending moment applied to the ribs which was calculated using Strand7. For the cargo bay section of the rib the maximum bending moment on the light rib is -5103Nm. By assuming that the stiffeners act as simply supported beams, the maximum stress due to this bending moment can be calculated and the dimensions of the stiffeners can be altered so that this stress does not lead to failure. Again, the detailed design calculations can be found in the Detail Stressing Report.

6.4.5 Heavy Rib Analysis

The heavy rib which was chosen to be designed in detail was located at 6.525m outboard and connected to the outboard main trunion of the landing gear. The method of designing the heavy rib is identical to that used for the light rib but with the additional requirement that the rib must be able to support the load resulting from this attachment to the main landing gear. The value of this load was provided by Mr. Julien Ertveldt and it was applied at the connection point using Strand7. As with the light analysis of the light rib, the rib was represented as a series of beam elements with the total length of the model being equal to the length of the actual rib and its height equal to the ribs average height. The loads both due to the aerodynamic forces and the landing gear attachment which were applied to the model are shown below with the air loads shown in white and the landing gear loads shown in light blue: 70

Figure 19 Loads applied to heavy rib Strand7 model

The most severe load which could be applied by the main landing gear to the rib was the one which was analysed and corresponded to the gust case where the gust causes the aircraft to experience a 3.58g acceleration. Taking the upward gust case, the resulting inertial load from the landing gear acts downward and in the opposite direction to the lift force as shown in the above figure and so this is how the loads were applied to the model. The process of designing the light rib was then repeated based on the values of the shear force and bending moment applied to the heavy rib calculated using Strand7. The web thickness required to support the loads applied by the main landing gear attachment was found to be 8.5mm. This is considerably higher than the 2mm web thickness required for the light rib which is to be expected as the main landing gear attachment loads represent some of the most concentrated and high magnitude loads on the aircraft.

6.4.6 Results and Discussion

The goal of carrying out the rib analysis discussed in this section was to determine the web thickness required to support the loads applied to the ribs. To achieve this the bending moment and shear force applied to the rib was calculated and then the web was designed to take the shear load and two horizontal stiffeners were designed to take the bending moment. Vertical stiffeners were also employed to improve the webs capability to resist buckling under the shear loads. This in turn allowed for the web thickness to be varied by

71

changing the number of vertical stiffeners used. The results of the rib design process are shown below: Component Light Rib Heavy Rib Web Thickness (mm) 2 8.5
Table 9 Rib Web Thicknesses

No. of vertical stiffeners 45 50

The values of web thickness shown above are those which were calculated for the ribs within the cargo bay section which were the most heavily loaded sections. The methodology of determining the thicknesses required for all other rib sections in the mid-wing is the same as was outlined in this section only with different loads and geometries considered. For the GDP it is only necessary to design one light rib and one heavy rib to demonstrate understanding of the process involved in doing so, this has been shown here.

6.5 Maintenance Considerations

It is vital that the structure is designed in such a way that it is accessible to maintenance workers. This is required both for the purposes of inspecting the structure for any damage and to facilitate the work required to repair this damage and for general maintenance of the vehicle. As the forward mid-wing encompasses the cargo bay much of the structure can be easily visually inspected from this large open space. The upper panels can be fully inspected from the cargo bay as can the upper portion of the spars and ribs. Originally it was hoped that a novel method of inspecting the structure beneath the cargo floor could be designed whereby access would be provided through a trap door in the cargo bay floor and then holes could be cut in the webs of the ribs to allow access to each of the panels. However, after much discussion of 72

this concept with the cargo bay designer it was eventually decided that it would not be feasible as there was not sufficient space in the cargo bay floor after its numerous redesigns to include this access door. Accordingly some holes were cut in the lower skin panel to allow for access panels to be installed so that the structure beneath the cargo floor can be inspected. The holes are elliptical in shape as this means that the maintenance covers can be inserted back into the aircraft and then rotated and secured in place but will not physically fit back through the hole without being rotated again. This ensures that it will not be possible for the pressure load applied to the cover to remove the cover once it is reinstalled by a maintenance worker after inspection. The location of the maintenance holes in the lower skin surface can be seen below:

Figure 20 Lower Skin Panel Showing Maintenance Hatch Holes

Two rows of holes were cut for maintenance hatches as the portion of the structure which is forward of the second spar would not be accessible via the aft row of holes due to the web of the spar in between.

73

As can be seen in the above image some of the stringers needed to be removed in order to cut the maintenance holes in the surface, in total four stringers were removed, two for each row of holes. This was not a problem for the holes cut to inspect the forward section of the structure as the number of stringers used here was dictated by the use of the same value for stringer pitch at the more critically loaded outboard section. Therefore more stringers than were required to in this area were present initially and so the removal of the two stringers did not have a critical effect on the structures capability to support the applied loads. To confirm whether or not the removal of the two stringers along the aft row of holes would compromise the structures ability to support the applied loads, the area of the panels was recalculated without these two stringers. The stress due to the applied loads was then re-evaluated and it was found that the stress was still below the local and global buckling stresses calculated using TW Panels. Therefore the removal of the stringers did not prevent the structure from being able to react the applied loads. The holes however lead to higher stress levels in the aircraft skins in their vicinity. To compensate for this the area around the holes needs to be thickened to ensure there is sufficient material present to support the loads. To estimate the reinforcement required ESDU data sheet 09014, entitled Elastic stress concentration factors. Geometric discontinuities in flat bars or strips of isotropic material was used (23). As the title of the data sheet suggests, it was assumed that the skin was made from an isotropic material and completely flat in order to simplify the analysis, this was necessary due to time constraints. Using Figure 5 of ESDU 09014 the stress concentration factor for the holes is approximately 4.5 and therefore the thickness of the area surrounding the holes should be increased to 4.5 times the skin thickness, i.e. the thickness of the surrounding area is 13.25mm. The thickened area around the holes is shown below:

74

Figure 21 Hole reinforcement due to stress concentrations

As mentioned above, the original plan for addressing the maintainability of the structure was to cut holes in the webs of the ribs so that the structure could be accessed via a trap door in the cargo bay floor and then inspected using these holes. This has the advantage of avoiding having to cut holes in the skin of the aircraft which lessens their ability to support the applied loads and in particular cutting or drilling holes in composite materials can prove troublesome because of the risk of causing delamination between the plies. Furthermore there are usually holes cut in rib webs to reduce their mass and cutting holes in the webs is more suitable than doing in the skins as the rib webs are usually less critically loaded. Although it was not possible to implement this feature in the final design, the concept of cutting holes in the rib web was adopted for inspection and maintenance of the most inboard rib. This rib has the largest average height of all the ribs in the mid-wing section and therefore its web can still support considerably high loads even after the maintenance hole has been cut. By allowing the area of the structure inboard of this rib to be accessed via this hole it allows for one less hole to be cut in the skin panels which in turn avoids the 75

disadvantages associated with doing so. This maintenance holes can be seen in the image below:

Figure 22 Rib with maintenance hole cut through web

6.6 Manufacturing Considerations

6.6.1 Introduction
This section discusses some of the considerations that have been made regarding the manufacture of the structure which this chapter has discussed the design of. There were some instances during the detail design process where the calculated dimensions were altered in order to facilitate the manufacture of the structure or particular dimensions were aimed for based on manufacturing capabilities. After all, there is little value in designing a structure which can withstand the applied loads perfectly but, for whatever reason, actually cannot ever be manufactured for use on the aircraft. When considering the manufacture of the structure the author consulted with Mr. Wang Shang who was allocated the task of considering the manufacture of the aircraft (24).

76

6.6.2 Skin/Stringer Panels Manufacture

The aerodynamic skin panels of the section are made from CFRP materials. One of the reasons behind this material choice was that, as the FW-12 is a flying wing aircraft, the external surface of the vehicle has quite complex curves in some section of the aircraft. This is particularly true for the mid-wing section as the aerofoil shape of the aircraft changes across the section, as discussed in Chapter 3. While metallic alloys can be used to manufacture the skin they would have to be comprised of several panels fastened individually to the structure in order to produce the desired profile. This is in turn would lead to numerous fasteners, all of which require inspection so the maintenance requirements of the aircraft would be increased. Furthermore each edge of the panels will contribute slightly to the skin drag on the aircraft so reducing these edges will improve performance. CFRP materials can be moulded to follow the surface of the aircraft and therefore, by making each moulded part of the skin as large as possible, the two problems resulting from the use of metallic materials for the skins can be avoided. The skins and stringers should be moulded together in order to form one part. As the material and resin chosen must be cured in an autoclave, the critical factor in manufacturing the skins will be the size of the autoclave available. The larger the autoclave is the larger the manufactured component can be and so fewer parts will be required to make the panels for the entire section. This will in turn reduce the maintenance and weight of the structure. The manufacture of the skins could be made cheaper and more consistent by using Contour Tape Laying machines to lay the plies which form the components. This state of the art manufacturing method is capable of producing parts with a double curvature such as the panels of the FW-12. This should

77

prove considerably cheaper than having assembly workers lay the plies by hand due to the considerable reduction in man-hours involved (25). It could be possible to improve the design of the panels in terms of their manufacture even further by carrying out further research to find suitable materials which can be cured without the use of an autoclave. The use of out of autoclave curing removes the constraints on component size which result from the limited size of autoclaves used in their manufacture.

6.6.3 Spar Manufacture

An example of a change made to the design based on manufacturing considerations was the choice of thickness for the third spar which also comprised the aft cargo bay pressure bulkhead. It is preferable to have this component made from a single piece of aluminium alloy in order to reduce the sealing required to keep it airtight. Due to the very large size of the component, which measures 3.3m tall at its most inboard point and is 5.4m in length, milling the component from a single block of aluminium would likely prove difficult and few manufacturers in the world, if any, would be capable of creating it. However the thickness which was required to withstand the loads applied was calculated as 3.158mm. Aluminium sheet metal is commonly available in various standard wire gauge thicknesses and swg 10 corresponds to a thickness of 3.25mm. So by increasing the thickness of the spar to 3.25mm, it could be manufactured from a single sheet of readily available material. There are still some difficulties in finding swg 10 sheets of the dimensions required, but the overall difficulty of manufacture should be greatly reduced by this decision. By using this thickness for both the webs and the spar caps the spar can be manufactured from a single sheet of swg10 aluminium. The required sheet would be slightly larger than the finished spar so it could then be cut into the desired shape. Then the edges of the sheet could be bent to the desired angle

78

so that the edges form the spar caps which are aligned with the inner surfaces of the aircraft skins. Furthermore the weight penalty arising from this decision was very small with an approximate increase in mass of only 3.1% and, if time had allowed for a more detailed investigation to be carried out, the weight penalty may have proved to be even less as smaller stiffeners are required for when a greater spar web thickness is used.

6.6.4 Rib Manufacture

Each section of the ribs are to be manufactured by milling solid blocks of aluminium to the desired shape. Based on the width of the flanges of the ribs the thickness of this block of aluminium should be 25.4mm and the length and height of the block will vary depending on which rib is being manufactured. The minimum recommend thickness when machining components in this manner is 2mm due to the tendency of thinner sections to deform under the milling loads (19). This can cause components of thickness lower than 2mm to vibrate during the milling process which in turn makes the surface finish very poor and this will reduce the fatigue life of the manufactured component as the imperfections in the surface will act as initiation sites for cracks. In light of these considerations a total of 45 vertical stiffeners were chosen to reinforce the web of the light rib. This number was chosen in order to adjust the sizes of the panels considered to be loaded in shear as 45 was determined to be the minimum number of stiffeners which would allow for a rib thickness of 2mm. By choosing this number of stiffeners the minimum web thickness was achieved and so this should prove to be the lightest possible rib design.

6.7 Connection to Inner and Outer Wing

The mid-wing section connects on its inboard side to the central part of the aircraft which consists of the inner-wing where the cabin is located and to the

79

outer wing on its outboard side. The connection to each of these sections has been considered and designed in conjunction with the relevant designers. The outer wing connects to the mid-wing at 11.2 m outboard from the centreline of the aircraft. This is achieved with the use of lugs on the ends of the webs of the four spars at the point where the sections meet, there are two lugs on each spar. Double lugs are used which were sized individually such that if one fails then the other will be capable of supporting the connection loads. One of these connection lugs was selected to be studied in detail for the purposes of the fatigue and damage tolerance analysis section. This work can be found in Chapter 8. The connection to the inner wing was discussed with Mr. Jiang Zhen who was one of the designers of the aft inner wing section. The connection focussed on was the connection made between the third spar in the mid-wing section and the fourth spar of the inner wing. These spars meet at 15m aft of the nose of the aircraft and their webs align to each other such that the web of the inner wings spar continues into the cargo bay to overlap with the third spar. The connection between the two sections is then achieved by bolting the two webs together.

6.8

Discussion

The detailed design of all the structural components of the mid-wing section has been discussed in this chapter. The process of designing the structure varied for each component and a number of different tools were used to determine the dimensions required of each component to support the loads applied to it. In industry the design of a new large civil transport aircraft is, more often than not, delayed at some stage of the project which results in its deadline being extended and the release date of the aircraft pushed back. This was not possible during the GDP as the date for the presentation to industry had been set months in advance and aside from this the Masters course can only last for one year so any sizeable extensions to deadlines were not feasible in this project. Therefore numerous assumptions have been made during the design 80

process in order to simplify the task at hand so that a first approximation for the structure dimensions could be calculated within the time constraints of the Group Design Project. As a result some work remains to be done on the design on the mid-forward wing in order to improve on the accuracy of the dimensions calculated here. For example, the structure has been designed without considering the effect of stress concentrations due to the various cut-outs in the spars and ribs. The reason for this being that the sizes, locations and dimensions of these cut-outs all depended on the requirements of the cargo bay section and were not finalised until late in the project. Each week at the GDP meetings different design concepts were presented by Mr. Ji Guosheng and various suggestions from members of staff and the design team led to further adjustments having to be made. As a result the shape of the cut-outs was not known in time and so the resulting stress concentration factors could not be taken into consideration when performing the calculations involved in designing the structure. However the reduction in the cross sectional area due to the cut-outs has been taken into account when calculating the applied stresses and at distances far from the cut-outs any stress concentration effect would become negligible. Therefore ignoring the stress concentration effects of the cutouts should not have too big of an impact on the accuracy of the results. Factoring in the full effects of the cut-outs could have been done had more time been available during the project or had the specifics of the cutouts been available earlier. Nevertheless the structure that has been designed should at least be accurate enough for the purposes of an initial design iteration. If future work is continued on from this project the cut-outs effects could be accounted for as the finalised design of the cargo bay is now available and can be found in Mr. Jis thesis (21). The theory of how each of the components was designed has been described here. First the process of designing the skin/stringer panels was outlined and

81

the resulting thicknesses were presented along with the layups of the CFRP plies chosen for each component. Next the design of the spars was discussed. The third spar has been designed in the most detail as this spar must also serve as the aft pressure bulkhead for the cargo bay area. The analysis of the bulkhead pressurisation, which applies to both the third spar and the outboard bulkhead, was also discussed as was the design of the spar caps. The first and second spars in the section were designed using the same procedure as was used to analyse the shear buckling of the web in the third spar. These two spars are only loaded in shear and do not have to withstand the pressure differential that the aft bulkhead, outboard bulkhead and skins do. The analysis conducted to design the ribs in the section was then discussed. To ensure that the GDP requirements of designing both a heavy rib and light rib were met the inertial loads of the cargo acting on the light rib were neglected and it was assumed that the rib only had to transmit the air loads to the spars. The process of calculating the loads applied to the light rib and subsequently designing the rib was then described in detail and the same process was used to design the heavy rib. The maintainability of the structure was then discussed as was the considerations made to facilitate the manufacture of the structure. In the Detail Stressing Report the exact method followed to determine the dimensions of the structure during the design process is described along with all the relevant calculations. The report can be found in the appendices.

82

7 Finite Element Analysis

7.1 Introduction
For members of the structures team on the Group Design Project, the goal is to design a structure which can safely support the loads which the aircraft will be subjected to while attempting to keep the mass as low as possible. As has been detailed in the previous chapter, this involved calculating the dimensions required of the various components so that they would have sufficient strength to not succumb to any of the various failure mechanisms considered. However, the data used to perform these calculations may not always be 100% applicable to the components that they are used in relation to. Some of the equations are based on assumptions or empirical formulae whereas some other tools rely upon data from experiments conducted under the carefully controlled conditions found in a laboratory which will inevitably differ from the conditions of real world applications. This leads to the possibility that some of the design techniques employed may not give entirely reliable results so it is desirable to check these results using another method. The use of finite element software is one such way of determining the accuracy of these calculations. Finite element software packages are commonly used in the aerospace industry, and indeed in a wide variety of engineering applications, to predict the stresses and deformations which may arise in a component under a given load. The PATRAN/NASTRAN software package was taught as part of the AVD course and following this the software has been used to perform tests on the components designed to provide further validation that they meet the loading requirements. To use PATRAN/NASTRAN the following methodology was employed: Prepare a model of the component to be analysed in CATIA comprised of surfaces and curves Import the model into PATRAN/NASTRAN 83

Mesh seed all of the curves at intersections between surfaces equally to ensure that the nodes coincide between one surface and the next Mesh the model using elements appropriate to the role of the component represented by each surface/curve Apply the relevant boundary conditions and loads to the model Post-process the results and compare with those obtained in the previous design work

Simulations have been run using both models which represent individual components of the structure under the locally applied loads and using a model of the entire mid-wing section. Due to time constraints and difficulties encountered using the software, only the skin/stringer panels were modelled as isolated components. The stresses experienced by the other structural members can however be evaluated using the full section model.

7.2 Skin/Stringer Panel Analysis

7.2.1 Introduction
As detailed in previous chapters, the dimensions of the skin/stringer panels had been determined so that they could support both the bending loads and the loads due to pressurisation. Both of these load scenarios were then simulated using a model of a panel constructed using PATRAN/NASTRAN so that the results could be compared. The panel modelled was from the lower skins as these had the lower value of skin thickness and was therefore the most critical when subjected to the pressure differential. The model used for the analysis is shown below:

84

Figure 23 Skin/Stringer Panel Modelled in PATRAN/NASTRAN

7.2.2 Model Construction

The model used in the analysis was constructed using the geometry functions within PATRAN/NASTRAN. The longest panel will be the one most likely to buckle in overall Euler buckling so this was the panel constructed. The method used to construct the panel was the same as that taught in the FEA tutorials (22). First a curve was constructed equal to the length of the panel, this was then extruded the length of the stringer pitch five times to create a panel comprised of five rectangular surfaces. These surfaces were then meshed using 2D shell elements and the lines formed at their intersections were meshed using 1D bar elements. The equivalence function of PATRAN/NASTRAN was then used to remove any duplicate nodes which were meshed at the intersections. Two different composite materials were defined in the model, one using the layup chosen for the lower skin and the other using the layup chosen for the lower stringers. These materials were then applied to the appropriate sections and in both cases the thickness of the elements were set to the component thicknesses calculated during the detailed design stage. The cross-section of the stringer elements used in the analysis was the same as those calculated by the TW Panels software and is shown below:

85

Figure 24 Stringer Cross Section Applied to FEA Panel Model

7.3 Pressurisation Analysis

The first analysis conducted was to determine the deflection and stresses in the panel when the pressurisation loads were applied. To represent how the panel would be restrained in application on the FW-12 the panel should be considered to be simply supported along its edges where it would be attached to light frames and ribs, these boundary conditions were applied to the model in the software. The pressurisation was modelled by applying a constant pressure on the surfaces of the panel equal to twice the operating differential pressure of 64,164kPa. The loads and boundary conditions applied to the panel are illustrated below with the restraints indicated by the light blue arrows and numbers and with the pressure load indicated by the red arrows:

86

Figure 25 Simulation of pressure loading on skin/stringer panel

7.4 Panel Buckling Analysis

The next analysis conducted using PATRAN/NASTRAN was the buckling analysis of the skin/stringer panel. The same model was used as in the pressurisation analysis but the loads and boundary conditions on the panel were adjusted for the buckling load case. The side of the panel opposite to where the buckling load was applied was fixed in translation in all directions while the two sides running perpendicular to this were fixed in the z-direction only, that is, the direction normal to the panel surface. The end where the axial load was applied was allowed to deform in the direction of the load. The force per unit length was calculated for the most critically loaded panel and this was then applied as an evenly distributed load over this edge of panel. The value of the ultimate distributed load was calculated as being 887N/mm. The loads and boundary conditions applied to the model for the buckling analysis is shown below:

87

Figure 26 Buckling analysis loads and boundary conditions

The buckling load could then be determined by solving for the eigenvalues of the buckling solution.

7.5 Full Section Model Analysis

It was also required to model the entire mid-wing section in PATRAN/NASTRAN in order to get a full appreciation for the deformation of the structure. To perform this analysis a full CAD model of the structure was prepared represented only by surfaces. This simplified model was then imported into PATRAN/NASTRAN as a .stp file and the surfaces were meshed and the elements given the appropriate dimensions and material properties so that they were representative of the designed components. As only the wing box is designed to take the applied loads the leading edge section and the elevator at the trailing edge of the mid-wing were not included in the model. Below is an image of the model that was imported into PATRAN/NASTRAN:

88

Figure 27 CATIA Model used in FEA Analysis

Due to time constraints and problems encountered in meshing the model the analysis was simplified by modelling the skin stringer panels as a series of panels of constant thickness. To evaluate the required thickness the total cross sectional area of the upper skin and stringers was divided by the length of the wingbox:

The same equivalent thickness parameter was calculated for the lower panels to account for the different skin and stringer dimensions used:

Therefore the thicknesses of the surfaces representing the upper and lower skin/stringer panels were set to 5.44mm and 4.25mm respectively.

7.5.1 Meshing
To facilitate the correct meshing of the model in PATRAN the geometric model was divided into numerous surfaces in CATIA before being imported. The ribs, spars and skin panels were divided into individual sections wherever they 89

intersected one another. In this way the edges common to each component in the FEA model could have an equal number of mesh seeds applied to them so that the mesh of each surface would end at the same nodes. The spars, ribs and skin panels were each sorted into individual Groups in PATRAN/NASTRAN so that each could be viewed and edited separately. Each of the lines at the intersection between components were seeded with a total of four mesh seeds to ensure that the nodes of one meshed section would coincide with the neighbouring sections. This is needed so that the forces and resulting displacements can be properly transmitted from one piece of structure to the next. The global edge length of the elements used to mesh the model was chosen as 70mm and the equivalence function was again used to remove duplicate nodes at the section boundaries. The meshing of the model proved difficult with numerous problems encountered during the process. This was exacerbated by the fact that Dr. Rui Pires, who taught the FEA course earlier in the year, had since left his position at Cranfield University and no replacement had been hired at the time of writing this thesis. As a result there was a disappointing lack of help available when problems such as this were encountered during the course of the FEA analysis work and this inevitably had an impact on the quality of the results which were eventually obtained.

7.5.2 Boundary Conditions and Applied Loads

The model was restrained at the inboard side along both the spar webs and the skins panels so that it was unable to move in any direction. This built-in boundary condition represented the connection of the mid-wing section to the inner wing section of the aircraft and is shown on the FEA model below:

90

Figure 28 Boundary conditions applied to the full section FEA model

In reality the inner wing section will also deform meaning that this boundary condition is not completely realistic however it is necessary to apply some restraints to the model in order to run the simulation. As the wingbox of the midwing section is both very tall and comprises the entire length of the aircraft it will not experience large deflections and therefore the assumption of the nodes being fixed is reasonably accurate for the purposes of this simulation. The force which the outer wing generates was calculated for a 2.5g pull up case and this load was applied evenly as point loads at each node on the ends of the spars. The lift force which the mid-wing section generates was also calculated and the average pressure required to produce this load based on the area of the mid-wing section was calculated. As is the usual convention, two thirds of this pressure was applied to the upper skin surface and one third was applied to the lower surface.

7.6 Results and Discussion

The first simulation discussed in this chapter investigated the pressurisation of the skin/stringer panels. The analysis was run and the deformation of the panel can be seen below, only the geometrical features of the panel were shown in the results and so the stringers, which were represented by lines that had bar elements assigned to them, are not visible but based on the deformation shape of the panel it is clear that their effects are still present:

91

Figure 29 FEA Pressurisation Analysis Results

The model would in reality be part of a much longer panel the length of the aircrafts wingbox and therefore the surfaces at either end of the panel stiffened by the presence of additional stringers here. Therefore it was the three sections towards the inside of the panel which were taken to be most reflective of how the actual panel would deform under the pressure load. The maximum deflection for these areas of the panels between the stringers was 1.5mm. this value agreed quite well with the calculations performed using EDSU 71005 which predicted a maximum deflection of 1.26mm in the lower skin panels. The next simulation presented was a buckling analysis conducted on the same skin/stringer panel model as was used in the pressurisation simulation. The load applied to the model was reflective of those that the actual panels will experience and the resulting displacement perpendicular to the panels surface is shown below:

92

Figure 30 Panel deflection under axial load

The results showed that the maximum deflection of the panel was 8.76 mm or 0.876 . This is a very small value of deflection which indicates

that the load applied to the panel will not buckle. This validates the buckling analysis performed earlier using TW Panels and confirms that the panels which have been designed will be able to support the applied loads. The final set of results was obtained using the model of the entire mid-wing section which was constructed. These results were difficult to obtain owing to the resignation of Dr. Pires which was mentioned earlier. However eventually the problems encountered in meshing the model were overcome and once the model was meshed correctly it was tested using a simplified load case in order to inspect the behaviour of the model. After this the boundary conditions and loads discussed earlier were applied and the results for the deformation and stress levels present in the model were calculated. Below is a figure showing the variation of the deflection of the section:

93

Figure 31 Deflection of full section FEA model

The value of maximum deflection was returned as 74.2mm as shown above. However this is not representative of the actual deformation because this deflection corresponds to a section of the aircraft which should have been fully restrained as can be seen in the image. The reason for this high deflection is unclear but likely results from the high reaction load required to restrain the model at the inboard side mistakenly resulting in a large deformation of the surrounding area. As this deflection is not reflective of the true deformation of the aircraft it should be ignored. The values of the models deflection elsewhere seem much more sensible. The deflection is at a maximum at the further outboard point of the structure and the decreases further inboard as expected due to the increasing size of the wingbox. The deflection of the model at the most outboard section of the midwing was found to be 39.6mm. To determine the accuracy of the simulation these results were compared with those obtained using a model of the entire half span of the aircraft which was constructed by Mr. Li Yan (27). The deflection of the outboard mid-wing predicted by this model was on the same 94

order of magnitude as the result obtained here but slightly higher, approximately 85mm. This is to be expected because the inboard side of the mid-wing section was not fixed on the model of the full half span as was the case with the model presented here, rather the centreline was fixed and the rest of the aircraft allowed to deform. Having validated the results for the deflection of the model against another simulation it is assumed that the stress values predicted by the model were also reasonably accurate. The stress tensor field was plotted and from this data the predicted value of the stress in the upper panels could be found as indicated in the image below:

Figure 32 Stress Tensor Field of entire section FEA model

From this the maximum value of stress in the panels, excluding the inboard area close where the boundary conditions were applied as the results once again are inconsistent with the expected values, was 147MPa. This agrees reasonably well with the values calculated previously which predicted stress 95

levels ranging from 163MPa to 112Mpa and so the stress values obtained are correct within an order of magnitude and accurate to within 70%. The predicted values of stress in the spars can be seen in the aft spar shown above. Excluding the results from the inboard section again the stress ranges from 59.1MPa to 118MPa with the most common stress value being approximately 88.4MPa. These results agree very well with those predicted in the Detail Design section where the shear stresses calculated in the spar web ranged from 72MPa to 82MPa with an average value of 77MPa. As discussed, the FEA analysis section proved particularly challenging as the author was left to learn the process of analysing the full section model largely unassisted as no replacement had been hired after Dr. Piress departure from Cranfield University. In light of the time constraints involved in the GDP and the steep learning curve involved in meshing a brand new model as opposed to the simplified models covered in tutorials the results overall were reasonably good and the process of meshing FEA models eventually became clearer. The deflection values predicted by the model of the skin/stringer panel were comparable to those calculated previously. Similarly the deflection of the full section model compared well with a similar simulation performed by another member of the structures team. The stress levels predicted by this model also compared reasonably well with those obtained beforehand. If more time had been available and, having become more familiar and proficient with the PATRAN/NASTRAN software package, it is believed that these results could have been improved further.

96

8 Fatigue and Damage Tolerance

8.1 Introduction
Aircraft manufacturers all strive to make their aircraft as light, fuel efficient, affordable and well designed as possible however there is one criterion in the design of these vehicles which outweighs all the above combined: their safety. This is especially true in the design of large civil transport aircraft where during any one flight there may be hundreds of human lives placed in the hands of the designers, it is an enormous responsibility. While every care possible is taken to make aircraft safe, accidents still happen. And while an aircraft can crash on its very first flight, it is more typically aircraft which have been in use for lengths of time approaching their service life which are most at risk of being involved in an accident. There are many reasons why this is the case but in terms of the structure of the aircraft one of the main factors in its degradation is fatigue. Fatigue is a failure mode which causes a component to fail at stress levels far beneath the failure stresses which were predicted during its design. The reason for this is that the load is applied and removed multiple times and this leads to cracks in the structure forming and growing under the cyclic nature of the loading. While fatigue is a concern for every component designed as part of the GDP and is kept in mind during the entire design process, it is required that each structural designer choose one component from their own section and design it paying specific attention to the fatigue behaviour of the component. To fulfil this requirement a connection lug has been designed and analysed using the AFGROW software package.

8.2 Component Analysed for Fatigue and Damage Tolerance

The mid-wing section connects to the outer wing at 11.2 m from the centre of the aircraft. This is achieved with the use of 8 lugs with two being placed on 97

each of the spars at the interface between the sections. The aerodynamic force produced by the outer wing section must be transmitted into the rest of the aircraft via this connection to the mid-wing. A sizeable quantity of the total lift force is generated by the outer wing which is shaped like the wing of a conventional aircraft and therefore the magnitude of the load transmitted is considerably high. The lugs which comprise this connection will be subjected to the fatigue loading spectrum of the whole aircraft and it was one of these lugs which was chosen to focus on in terms of fatigue study for the purposes of the Group Design Project. The maximum loading condition for the lug connections may not necessarily be the same case as those used in other design calculations due to the inertia relief effect due to the fuel stored in the wings, or lack thereof in cases where these tanks are empty. Furthermore, whereas the data related to various combined pitch and roll manoeuvres were used to size the structural components, the loads used for the purpose of the fatigue analysis section were taken from the loads encountered in steady level 1g flight as advised by Dr. Xiang Zhang. This is because the loading spectrum given for fatigue analysis is in terms of the normalised load factor so the 1g loads must be multiplied by the relevant g factors at a later stage. As such, the author examined the data from the relevant cases for various mass values and found that for steady level flight loads the following loads are generated by the outer wing section:

Mass Case MTOW 176,469kg MZFW 103,730 kg OEW 75,024kg

Force from Outer Wing 573,198 N 275,970 N 234,676 N

Table 10 1g Flight Cases Considered for Fatigue Loading

98

These three cases were evaluated when the aircraft is flying at its cruise altitude of 35,000 feet and cruise velocity of 243 m/s true airspeed. It is clear that the maximum take off mass case represented the most critical 1g flight case and so it was the load corresponding to this case which was used for the fatigue analysis of the connection lugs. At the spanwise location where the outer wing joins the mid-wing there are a total of four spars, a set of lugs is attached to points near the top and bottom of these spars and to simplify the analysis it is assumed that each lug will support one eighth of the total load. Due to the applied load, tensile stresses, shear stresses and bearing stresses will arise in the lug all of which must be checked to ensure none are high enough to cause failure. However it is the tensile stresses which will cause cracks to grow through the lug due to the cyclic nature of the load. As shown above the total aerodynamic load is 573,198 N, assuming that this load is shared equally amongst the eight lugs then each one must support a load of 71,650 N. Originally the intention was to take this load to act vertically which would cause a crack to grow through the lug in the horizontal direction. However AFGROW cannot model the growth of a crack in this direction so, based on the advice of Dr. Zhang, the load was taken to act at an angle to the vertical. The horizontal component of this force would then produce tensile stresses which would cause cracks to grow in such a manner that could be modelled using AFGROW. To model the growth of a crack due to the tensile loads applied by the vertical component of the lift force would require a finite element simulation which there was not sufficient time for and is outside of the scope of the GDP (27). The loading on the lug is illustrated below:

99

Figure 33 Loading of lug modelled using AFGROW

The angle which the force was inclined at was assumed to be 20 degrees to the vertical, this allowed for the tensile stress to be determined as follows:

Using the same notation for lug geometry as was used in the Detail Stressing lecture series (24), i.e. that c is the minimum distance between the edge of the lug and the edge of the hole, and for a lug of thickness t, the tensile stress due to this load is:
Equation 32

So, based on the dimensions of the final design of the lug, the tensile stress was calculated as being:

100

Originally the design was carried out using aluminium alloys, however the calculated load resulted in quite a high stress unless unacceptably larger thicknesses were used. These high stresses had the effect of drastically shortening the fatigue life of the lugs when designed using aluminium alloys. In light of this it was decided that a titanium alloy would be used for the connection lugs. The alloy chosen was Ti-6Al-4V based on the recommendation of Dr. Zhang, the high bearing stress and yield strength of this material would allow for more suitable lug dimensions to be used while still resulting in an acceptable fatigue life for the connection. Furthermore the outer wing designer had decided to make the spars in this section from a composite material and so the use of titanium lugs for the connection would circumvent the necessity of isolating the materials from each other in order to avoid the problems arising from the galvanic difference between them had aluminium alloys been chosen.

8.3 Loading Spectrum

The loading spectrum is the same spectrum that is used for the entire FW-12 aircraft which was derived by Mr. Li Yan (29). In this, the number of times a particular load is expected to occur during the aircrafts lifetime is given in terms of a load factor, as shown:

101

Figure 34 Fatigue Analysis Load Spectrum

The total number of cycles is therefore 11,111,111 which represents the entire service life of the aircraft. The results of the AFGROW simulations could be compared against this number of cycles to predict the fatigue life of the connection lug. To obtain the load which must be considered for fatigue calculations, these load factors must be multiplied by the stress calculated above:

Probable number of cycles 1

Nz +

Nz -

1.92

0.09

163.37

7.65

102

10 100 1000 10000 100000 1000000 10000000

1.91 1.88 1.82 1.66 1.48 1.32 1.18

0.1 0.18 0.28 0.46 0.63 0.76 0.88

162.52 159.96 154.86 141.25 125.93 112.32 100.41

8.51 15.31 23.82 39.14 53.61 64.67 74.88

Table 11 Fatigue Stress Input Data

This data was applied to the model using the AFGROW software package. However, each time the lugs geometry was changed the stress applied would also vary. To avoid having to change the input spectrum each time the spectrum was entered in terms of the values for Nz+ and Nz-. The stress multiplication factor was then set equal to the stress resulting from the 1g loads for each new iteration of the lug design, the stress shown in the table above were for the finalised design.

8.4 AFGROW Analysis

As discussed above, the crack growth had to be simulated using one of the models available within AFGROW. The model chosen was Single Corner Crack in Lug. Based on the recommendations in reference (26) the initial size of the crack was 0.00127mm both in depth and width. It was assumed that a large bolt and connection would be needed to attach the outer wing as the total length of the section outboard of the lugs is approximately 20m in length, the following geometry was input into AFGROW:

103

Figure 35: Lug Dimensions for AFGROW Simulation

From this the tensile stress causing the crack to grow was determined as:

This value was then input into the spectrum of AFGROW and the simulation was run to predict the number of cycles to failure of the lug. The results of the AFGROW simulation indicated that this configuration of lug would fail after 1.133e+008 cycles which was over ten times the design life of the aircraft. Designers of large civil transport aircraft such as Airbus typically aim for primary structure components to have design lives of 2 to 4 times the length of the aircraft service life. It was therefore decided that this lug was too robust for the purposes of connecting the outer wing and mid wing sections together. Accordingly, the design process was repeated until the predicted number of cycles to failure fell within more acceptable limits. The dimensions of the final design of the connection lug are shown below:

104

So the tensile stress applied to the lug was:

The predicted number of cycles to failure for this configuration was 2.259e+007 which equates to 2.33 times the aircraft service life which fits well within the recommended lifespan of 2 to 4 times the aircrafts service life. The service life of the FW-12 aircraft is 10,000 flights or 80,000 flight hours, so based on this the lug should survive 186400 flight hours. Below is a plot of the progression of the crack until failure which occurred when the crack had reached the free edge of the lug:

105

Table 12 Fatigue Crack Growth Plot

8.5 Inspection Intervals

The crack growth life of the connection lug exceeds the service life of the aircraft but nevertheless it is desirable to detect any cracks in the lugs as soon as possible so that they can be replaced. The detectable crack length depends on the methods of inspection being deployed and can vary from anything between 0.25 2.5mm (30). This means that using the more advanced detection techniques the crack can be detected from when the aircraft enters service based on the assumed initial crack length of 1.27mm and so it could be detected at any time. Therefore the lugs should be inspected during the same inspection intervals as are applied for the rest of the aircraft.

8.6 Results and Discussion

This chapter presented a lug which has been designed based on the Damage Tolerance design philosophy for the connection between the mid-wing and outer wing sections. Based on the results of a fatigue simulation run using AFGROW the connection lugs should have a longer crack growth life than the service life of the aircraft by a factor of 2.33, in keeping with common industry practice. The initial design proved to be excessive to the requirements of the lug 106

with a predicted crack growth life of 10.197 times the service life of the aircraft. The design was subsequently iterated until the lugs were predicted to have the much more acceptable fatigue life of 2.33 aircraft service lives. A number of assumptions were made during the lug analysis in order to simplify the design procedure so that it could be completed within the time constraints of the GDP. The load which was taken to be applied to the lug was that produced by the outer wing during 1g steady level flight. In reality the lugs will also have to be able to withstand the loads encountered during the pitching and rolling manoeuvres which the other structural components have been designed using. Furthermore it was assumed that the lugs would each take one eighth of the applied force and that this force will act at an angle of twenty degrees to the vertical. In reality the loading will be different for each lug, a more detailed simulation of the connection using finite element analysis would provide more accurate design data. However, allowing for these assumptions, the lug has been designed according to the Damage Tolerance philosophy to have sufficient fatigue life to safely fulfil its role of connecting the mid and outer wing sections together as per the requirements of the Group Design Project.

107

9 Aeroelasticity
9.1 Introduction
When the loading on a wing is calculated it is assumed the wing is a completely rigid body and does not deform due to the applied loads. In reality this is not the case and instead the applied aerodynamic load will cause the wing to change shape which will in turn change the characteristics of the aerodynamic load created. Aeroelasticity is the field concerned with this coupling of the aerodynamic loads with the deformation of the structure. This chapter discusses the aeroelastic phenomena which were taken into consideration when designing the forward mid-wings structure.

9.1.1 Static Aeroelastic Phenomena

As the wing generates lift it is twisted about its longitudinal axis by these applied loads and the angle of attack of the wing will increase which in turn leads to an increase in the aerodynamic load and so this cycle repeats. This torsional deformation cycle diverges at a certain velocity to structural failure. Another static aeroelastic phenomenon which should be considered in designing a wing is the reversal of control devices. When a trailing edge control device is deployed a nose-down moment will be produced. This moment will cause the wing to twist so that the angle of attack of the entire wing, and hence that of the deployed control surface, is reduced. At a certain speed, the nose and will subsequently lead

down twist will result in the net deflection of the surface being zero and above this speed the deflection will be negative relative to the direction of the flow. As the design of the forward mid-wing does not involve the consideration of trailing edge devices only the divergence speed has been investigated here.

108

9.2 Torsional Divergence

In order to calculate the value of the following formula was used which was

given in the notes of the Aeroelasticity course given by Dr. Shijun Guo (31):

where

Equation 33

is the torsional stiffness of the section calculated at 0.7 semi-span, is the distance between the centre of pressure and the is the semi-

is the air density,

flexural axis expressed as a fraction of the local chord ( ) and span.

This formula is only valid for unswept wings. The FW-12 has a sweep angle of 39 degrees (1) and so the effect of this sweep must be accounted for. A method of doing so is provided by Wright and Cooper in reference (32). The following graph illustrates the relationship between sweep angle and the divergence speed:

Figure 36 Relationship between divergence speed and sweep angle (32)

By extrapolation the factor corresponding to a sweep angle of 39 degrees was found to be 2.1544. The value of could now be calculated and compared to the requirement stated in CS 25.629 that divergence should not occur below 1.15 at any altitude. To illustrate the effect of altitude on the aircrafts capability of meeting this criterion the value of was calculated at 4 altitudes: 109

Altitude (ft) 0 25000 35000 42000

m/s (TAS) 180 266.58 272.94 277.34

1.15 m/s (TAS) 207 306.567 313.881 318.941

m/s (TAS) 364.583 534.53 642.802 756.705

m/s (TAS) 785.4594 1151.596 1384.852 1630.245

Table 13 Divergence Velocity Results

9.3 Discussion
The divergence velocities at four different altitudes were calculated and are shown in the 5th column in the above table. From the results it is clear that the aircraft easily meets the divergence requirements as specified in CS25. The relatively high sweep angle of the FW-12 leads to divergence not being a significant concern but even if the effect of sweep is ignored the velocities at which divergence will occur still exceed 1.15 considerably. As is the case with the majority of the work carried out for the GDP some assumptions have been made here and so more detailed simulation may be needed before it can be absolutely certain that the aircraft complies with the requirements. However as the predicted divergence velocity is more than twice the design speed of the aircraft it is almost certain that divergence will not present a significant design problem for the aircraft.

110

10 Project Management & Interface Issues Control

10.1 Introduction
The author took on the voluntary secondary task of being a member of the Interface Issues Control Team (IICT) along with Mr. Julien Ertveldt (7) and Mr. Sheng Yongmin (8). Early in the project the author discussed the responsibilities of the IICT with the course director, Dr. Shijun Guo. Dr. Guo instructed that the purpose of this team was to facilitate the resolving of any issues which arose during the project by coordinating the relevant team members as necessary. The IICT formed one of the sub-teams of the Project Management Team, the other groups which comprised the management team and the structure of the team is illustrated below:

Project Management Team

Project Plan & Progress Management

Mass, Inertia and CG Control

Risk Register Management

Interface Issues Control

Figure 37 Project Management Team Hierarchy

Essentially the goal of the IICT was that if a member of the team had an issue which was hindering their design progress they could report it to the IICT who would then organise a meeting with the relevant designers so that the best possible solution for all those involved in the issue could be implemented.

111

10.2 Issues Addressed

10.2.1 Redesign of Trailing Edge
As was mentioned earlier in Chapter 3, the trailing edge of the aircraft was redesigned based on the recommendations of Prof. Fielding. It was believed that the sharp kink in the rear spar would lead to manufacturing difficulties and stress concentrations in the spar. To determine the exact changes which would be made and how the new design might be optimised with regards to the location of the trailing edge devices, a meeting was called by the IICT for all the members of the structural design team. The team discussed the various implications of the redesign and together finalised the planform of the FW-12 as shown earlier in Chapter 2 and here again below:

Figure 38 Planform of the FW-12 before (left) and after (right) the redesign of the trailing edge.

The changes agreed on in this meeting allowed for the flaps of the aircraft, which were initially aligned with the original sweep angle of the trailing edge of the outer wings, to be set perpendicular to the direction of flight. This improved the efficiency of the flaps which would prove useful later in the project when concerns over the lift required at take-off arose and also removed the risks associated with the sharp kink in the spars.

10.2.2 Location of ribs in mid-wing and outer-wing

One other example of an interface issue which arose during the project was the decision of where to locate the ribs which would support the outer elevators and the slats. The leading edge slats would connect to the ribs and so the hinge 112

points of the slats would be determined by the rib locations and vice-versa. Similarly the location of the hinge positions for the outer elevator also depended on the location of the ribs so the designers were faced with the task of determining how the rib locations would be decided; based on the requirements of the outer elevators or of the slats. The solution was developed not by the interface issues control team but by all the designers involved during a meeting which the IICT organised to solve the problem. The decision was taken that the rib locations would be first determined by the attachment requirements of the outer elevators and the attachment of the slat would be then designed based on these rib locations. The reasoning behind this was that, due to the short moment arm over which the elevators act because of the FW-12s flying wing configuration, the magnitude of the loads which they generate can be very high. Furthermore, the elevators will be used in more phases of flight and more frequently than the slats so the requirements of the elevator design were deemed to be more critical than those of the slat design.

10.2.3 CATIA Black Box Conflicts

Another responsibility of the Interface Issues Control team was resolving the conflicts in the assembly of the black box CAD model of the FW-12. This consisted of an assembly of very simplified models or black box models which represented each of the components on the aircraft. The goal of assembling the black box models was to determine if any conflicts were presented regarding the allocation of space on-board the aircraft. These issues tended to arise more so at the beginning of the project, in particular the black box representing the cargo bay section overlapped with black box of the main landing gear bay. This issue had to be resolved and so the IICT organised a meeting between the relevant designers to determine the cause of the problem and find a solution.

113

The reason for the conflict between the cargo bay and main landing gear bay turned out to be a result of the redesign of the trailing edge of the aircraft from the original external shape to the new profile. The changes made to the kink of the wing and the nose led to a mismatch of the dimensions of the components. However the conflict was small, on the scale of only a couple of hundred millimetres, and so the resolution was that the cargo bay would be reduced in size as the space required to retract the main landing gear was the limiting factor. This solution was agreed upon by all designers involved.

114

11 Mass Estimation
The mass and position of centre of gravity (CG) are key parameters in the design of any aircraft and in particular the centre of gravity location is of vital importance when designing a flying wing aircraft such as the FW-12 due to the inherent reduced stability of such vehicles. Throughout the course of the Group Design Project the CG was monitored by Mr. Alasdair MacBean (33) as the sole member of the CG Monitoring Team. As well as this the overall mass of the aircraft was monitored throughout, in particular the maximum take-off mass (MTOW) which is a vital characteristic of the aircraft as it determines the minimum amount of lift which the aircraft must be able to produce in order to fly. The initial values for the masses and locations of the various components of the aircraft had been determined from the conceptual design study performed previously (1), this gave a preliminary value for the CG position and MTOW. The CG position could change slightly as needed provided that it did not exceed the limits with which the stability system could cope but the value of MTOW was regarded as being an upper limit as any significant increases in its value may have required drastic changes to the aerodynamics of the aircraft to ensure enough lift could be produced. The mass and CG of the various components within the forward section of the mid-wing were calculated using the values of the area and centre of gravity for each component which were determined using the CATIA model and the values for thickness which had been calculated during the detail design section. The pie chart below indicates the proportion of the sections total mass which can be attributed to each component:

115

Mass Breakdown
Ribs 16%

Leading Edge 7% Outboard Bulkheads 6%

Upper Skin 16%

Upper Stringer 8% Lower Skin 13%

Front Spars 9% Third Spars 10% Second Spars 9%

Lower Stringers 6%

Figure 39: Forward Mid-Wing Mass Breakdown

The choice of materials has had an impact on the estimated mass breakdown of the structure. The skin stringer panels make up 44.39% of the total mass of the structure. Typically this figure would be higher but as the spars and ribs are made from aluminium alloys and the skins from composite materials, the skins are comparatively lighter than would be the case had all the components been made from the same materials. The estimated value of each components mass is shown in the table below:

Component Upper Skin Upper Stringers Lower Skin Lower Stringers Third Spars

Mass (kg) 435.58 218.51 338.847 170.27 255.57

116

Second Spars Front Spars Outboard Bulkheads Leading Edge Rib Total

243.77 230.85 171.37 183.66 434.07 2682.9

Table 14Mass Breakdown of Forward Mid-Wing Structure

117

12 Airworthiness Requirements Section:

In order for a new aircraft or variation of a previous aircraft to be issued with a Certificate of Compliance it must be shown that all components comprising the aircraft have met the requirements of the relative airworthiness authority. As the FW-12 will be used as what is termed a large civil transport aircraft it must show compliance with the requirements of EASAs Certification Specifications 25 requirements (CS-25) (2). In CS-25 there is a standard set of Means of Compliance (MOC) codes as listed in the lecture notes of the sustaining design course (17) and these are shown below: MOC Code 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Description Definition Drawing, Description or Report Calculations and Analysis Safety Analysis Lab/Rig Testing Aircraft Ground Tests Aircraft Flight Tests Inspection/Survey Simulator Test Equipment Qualification and Procurement

118

13 Conclusion
This thesis has documented and discussed the work conducted by the author in the course of the Group Design Project. The task at hand was to design the structure of the forward mid-wing section of the FW-12 flying wing civil transport aircraft so that it could survive the ultimate loads which it would encounter during service. The first chapter discussed the loading analysis conducted at the beginning of the project which involved determining the loads required from the elevators to perform various symmetric manoeuvres. The additional work performed by the author in assisting the calculation of the loading distributions was also discussed. The goal of conducting this phase of the project was to determine the loads which the aircraft would be subjected to, this in turn allowed for the structure to be designed to support these loads. The initial structural design of the mid-wing section of the aircraft was then presented in Chapter 3. The structural layout was decided upon by all members of the structures design team and the roles of the main structural members were outlined. The subsequent chapters detailed the process followed to design the individual structural components and the development of finite element simulations of the sections response to the applied loads so that the results of the two approaches could be compared. The evaluation of the fatigue behaviour of the lugs which connect the outer wing to the mid-wing was then covered as was the considerations made regarding the effects of aeroelastic phenomena on the structure. The final three chapters discussed the work done for the secondary task of Interface Issues Control management, the breakdown of the mass of the structure designed and the compliance of the design with the airworthiness requirements as specified in CS-25. The detailed calculations performed and procedures followed to arrive at the results presented in this thesis can be found in the appendices following this section. The Group Design Project comprises the largest percentage of the total marks on the Aerospace Vehicle Design course at Cranfield University. The aim of the 119

project is to teach the students of the AVD course to design specific components of an aircraft and do so in an environment which resembles that found in the aerospace industry. The work performed on the project resulted in the author gaining experience in using software packages which are commonly used in industry such as CATIA, Strand7 and PATRAN/NASTRAN as well as further experience using Microsoft Excel. Furthermore the process of designing engineering components to fulfil a particular role but having been given only the most basic data to begin the design process was a new experience which led to an increased appreciation of the overall design process, not just in the aerospace field but in engineering in general.

120

ITEM DESCRIPTION Loads

CS-25 REFERENCE CS 25.301

COMPLIANCE STATUS Compliant

REQUIREMENT

MEANS OF COMPLIANCE

MOC CODE

Definition of loads to be used for sizing structural components

The loads used to design each component have been specified Limit loads have been scaled

Factor of Safety

CS 25.303

Compliant

A factor of safety must be

applied when designing the up by a factor of 1.5 structure Strength and deformation CS 25.305 Compliant The structure must be able to withstand limit loads and ultimate loads for 3 seconds Proof of structure CS 25.307 To be verified The structure has to demonstrate its survivability under critical conditions Testing of manufactured structure, more accurate FEA analysis, more detailed calculations 2,4,5,6, The structure has been designed to withstand the ultimate loads 2

121

Flight loads

CS 25.321

Compliant

The load factor n must be investigated for each relevant case (mass, altitude, manoeuvre, etc)

Load factors obtained from gust analysis and pitch manoeuvres have been applied The loading actions combine all the relevant cases encountered in the n-V diagrams Airspeeds were based on those provided in the conceptual design work and comply with the requirements n-V diagram has been compiled based on these load factor requirements The gust analysis was simplified due to time 2

Flight manoeuvring envelopes

CS 25.333

Compliant

The aircraft must be able to survive loads encountered within the n-V diagram domain

Design airspeeds

CS 25.335

Compliant

The requirements for the various design airspeeds from the relevant CS-25 section must be met

1,2

Limiting manoeuvring load factors Gust and turbulence loads

CS 25.337

Compliant

Requirement for the maximum and minimum load factor

CS 25.341

To be verified

The structure has to survive discrete and 122

continuous gusts

constraints and carried out according to CS 23.341s alleviated sharp edge gust method

Pressurised compartment loads

25.365a

Compliant

The aircraft structure must be strong enough to withstand the loads resulting from pressure differentials across its surfaces

The skin stringer panels of the structure were sized based on the stresses encountered during the ultimate applied loads and also when a pressure differential of twice the expected operating pressure exists

Damage tolerance and fatigue evaluation of structure

CS 25.371

To be verified

The structure must be shown to be damage tolerant and that its fatigue life is greater than the aircraft service life

A connection lug was studied in detail to meet these requirements, more work is required to ensure the entire structure complies

2,4

123

Lightning protection

CS 25.581

Compliant

The aircraft must be able to withstand and survive lightning strike effects

The skin is a composite material and so to ensure compliance a copper mesh will be added in manufacture

Materials

CS 25.603

Compliant

The aircraft must be manufactured from approved materials

Only approved aerospace materials were selected

Approved fabrication methods

CS 605 (b)

Compliant

Each new aircraft

Where manufacturing

fabrication method must be considerations have been substantiated by a test programme made, they employ the use of tried and testing manufacturing processes

Proof of structure flutter

CS 25.629

Partially compliant

The aircraft must be designed to be free from flutter and divergence

The relevant flutter analysis was conducted and presented, tests may be needed to validate fully

2,4

Accessibility

CS 25.611

Compliant

Access must be provided 124

Visual inspection from the

provisions

in order to inspect the structure

cargo bay for most of the structure and access panels cut in lower skin

Bird strike damage

CS 25.631

Compliant/Partially The aircraft has to survive Compliant a bird strike

The leading edge of the aircraft was sized based on this requirement. However the formula used was empirical and so testing is needed to confirm if the structure is fully compliant.

2,4

125

14 Bibliography
1. Students, AVIC. FW-11 Specifications Report - Conceptual Design Data. 2011. 2. CS-25. Certification Specifications and Acceptable Means of Compliance for Large Aeroplanes. 2011. 3. Guo, Dr. S. FW-12 GDP Task List. s.l. : Cranfield University, 2012. 4. Stinton, Darrol. The Anatomy of the Airplane. 1998. 5. Smith, H. Loading Actions Lecture Notes. 2012. 6. Howe, Denis. Aircraft Loading and Structural Layout. s.l. : Professional Engineerig Publishing UK, 2004. 7. Ertveldt, J. Structural Design of Mid-Wing Aft Section on FW-12 MSc Thesis. s.l. : Cranfield University, 2012. 8. Hybrid Wing-Body Pressurized Fuselage Modelling, Analysis and Design for Weight Reduction. Mukhopadhyay, V. s.l. : American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2012. 9. Company, Hexcel. Hexcel Prepregs for Aerospace. [Online] [Cited: 5 August 2012.] http://www.hexcel.com/products/aerospace/aprepregs. 10. NewAirplane.com. [Online] The Boeing Company, 2012. [Cited: 24 May 2012.] http://www.newairplane.com/787/design_highlights/#/VisionaryDesign/Composit es/OnePieceBarrelConstruction. 11. Alcoa. Technical Data Sheet for Aluminium Alloy 2099 T-83. [Online] Alcoa. [Cited: 07 08 2012.]

http://www.alcoa.com/adip/catalog/pdf/Alloy2099TechSheet.pdf.

126

12. Stocking, P. Detail Stressing Lecture Note AVD9638. s.l. : Cranfield University, 2012. 13. ESDU. Laminate Stacking Sequences for Special Orthotropy. s.l. : ESDU, 1982. 14. Guo, S. Design and Analysis of Composite Structures Lecture Series. s.l. : Cranfield University, 2012. 15. ESDU 71005 Buckling of Flat Plates in Shear. ESDU. 16. ESDU. Elastic direct stresses deflections for flat rectangular plates under uniformly distributed normal pressure. 17. Stocking, P. Structural Durability - Sustaining Design Course. s.l. : Cranfield University, 2012. 18. Aircraft hardware - The MS20426 and NAS1097 rivet. Aerospace Engineering Teaching Blog. [Online] [Cited: 14 September 2012.]

http://aeroteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/aircraft-hardware-ms20426-andnas1097.html. 19. Ltd., Strand7 Pty. Strand7 Tutorial Notes. 2012. 20. Niu, M. Airframe Stress Analysis and Sizing. 2001. 21. Guosheng, Mr. Ji. Cabin Layout - Structural Design and Cargo Handling FW-12 Group Design Project. s.l. : Cranfield University. 22. Pires, Dr. R. PATRAN/NASTRAN FEA Analysis Lecture Notes. 2012. 23. Zhang, Dr. Xiang. Meeting with Dr. Zhang and lug fatigue analysis group on August 29th. 24. Stocking, Mr. Phil. Detail Stressing Data Sheets. 25. Yan, Li. Structural Design of Inner Wing Structure of FW-12 Aircraft. s.l. : Cranfield University, 2012.

127

26. Zhang, Dr. X. Fatigue, Fracture & Damage Tolerance Lecture Notes. 27. Yongmin, Mr. Sheng. Structural Design of Outer Wing Section on FW-12. s.l. : Cranfield University, 2012. 28. Company, Airbus. A380 Specifications. [Online] [Cited: 21 May 2012.] http://www.airbus.com/aircraftfamilies/passengeraircraft/a380family/a380800/specifications/. 29. Palmer, Barbarie E. Blended Wing Body Airliner Advanced Technology Integration Study (BW-01) Centre Fuselage - Unvaulted Pressure Hull Design. 30. Assair, E. BW-11 Eagle Ray Blended Wing Body - Design of the Outer Wing in Composite Materials. s.l. : Cranfield University, 2012. 31. University, Stanford.

adg.stanford.edu/aa241/structures/structuraldesign.html. [Online] [Cited: 04 09 2012.] 32. Zhang, Dr. X. Conversation on September 6th 2012. 2012.

128

15 Appendices Appendix A Loading Actions

The loading actions work performed in the earlier stages of the project were discussed in Chapter 2 and some sample calculations are shown here to demonstrate the work performed as part of this section

A.1 Steady Level Flight

An example of the calculations performed to determine the force required to keep the aircraft trimmed in steady level flight is shown here. The case considered in this example is when the aircraft is flying at its cruise altitude of 35,000 feet or 10.668 km and at its cruise velocity corresponding to an equivalent airspeed of 144.04m/s. That mass of the aircraft considered is its maximum take-off mass of 176,469kg and its centre of gravity is at its most forward position. The calculation considers the case where the inner elevator is used to trim the aircraft and the relevant case number is 45_1. To determine the force required to trim the aircraft all of the forces acting on it must be determined along with their corresponding moments about the vehicles centre of gravity. Once this has been determined the moment required to trim can be calculated along with the necessary elevator force. From the conceptual design study performed previously (1), the locations of the centre of gravity ( ) and aerodynamic centre ( fraction of the mean aerodynamic chord are: ) of the aircraft expressed as a

The mean aerodynamic chord has a value of 12.28m and is located 9.49m from the nose of the aircraft, therefore

129

The moment arm over which the lift force will act about the centre of gravity is therefore:

In steady level flight the wings must produce a lift force ( ) equal in magnitude to the weight of the aircraft its weight is: . The mass of the aircraft is 176,469kg, therefore

The moment due to the lift generated is therefore:

Next the moment due to the thrust produced by the engines must be evaluated. In steady level flight the thrust must equal the drag acting on the aircraft, so it is necessary to calculate this first. The drag ( ) acting on the aircraft is a function of the dynamic pressure ( ) which is in turn a function of the local air density and the true airspeed:

Therefore

With this value known the coefficient of lift

of the aircraft can also be found :

as this will be required in to calculate the drag coefficient

130

The drag coefficient (

can now be evaluated, this is a function of the aircrafts

shape and also the lift generated:

Therefore the drag acting on the aircraft is:

So the thrust which the engines must provide to maintain steady level flight is 87,569N.The engine pylon length given in the conceptual design data was 3.2m, therefore the moment due to the thrust is:

The final moment acting on the aircraft which must be determined is the zero lift pitching moment. This is done using the zero pitching moment coefficient which was determined during the conceptual design phase:

Finally the moment required to trim the aircraft can now be found by summing the moments previously calculated in the appropriate directions. Nose down moments are taken as being negative and nose up moments are positive, therefore:

To determine the force required from the inner elevator to produce this moment the effective tail length discussed in Chapter 2 must be evaluated. The effective tail length relative to the aerodynamic centre can be found as follows: | |

131

From the conceptual design data, the values of the rate of change of the elevator pitch moment and the lift curve slope for the elevator at

aircrafts cruise velocity of M=0.82 are:

Therefore: | |

So the moment arm over which the elevator force acts is this distance plus the distance between the aerodynamic centre and the centre of gravity:

So with this the force required from the elevator to maintain steady level flight is:

This force must be applied in a downward direction in order to produce a nose up moment.

A.2 Steady Rotary Motion

The force required of the elevators to put the aircraft into a state of steady rotary motion was also calculated. The altitude and velocity of the aircraft in this sample calculation are the same as used in the previous section as is the vehicles mass and centre of gravity location. The sample calculation finds the force required to hold the aircraft in a 2.5g pull-up manoeuvre in steady rotary motion and the case number used to distinguish the case was 1015. The theory detailing this calculation can be found in Chapter 2. First the aircraft relative density is calculated:

132

Using this and the pitch moment damping coefficient, given in the conceptual design data as calculated: = -1.13810, the manoeuvre margin of the aircraft can be

The lift-curve slope for the inner elevator at this velocity is:

The increment in the inner elevators deflection is therefore:

( From this the increment in elevator load can be found:

Therefore the total load required from the inner elevators to perform this manoeuvre is the sum of this increment in elevator load and the load required to maintain steady level flight:

133

Appendix B - Initial Sizing Appendix

B.1 Leading Edge Thickness
The thickness required to survive bird-strikes satisfactorily can be estimated using the following formula:

is taken to be the greater of either the cruise velocity of the aircraft at sea level or 85% of the cruise velocity at an altitude of 8000ft. Taking the FW-12s cruise speed to be Mach 0.82 and the speed of sound at 8000ft to be 330.802m/s the required velocity for the collision was found to be 230.57m/s. As discussed in Chapter 5 is a material factor defined as and is

equal to 5.891 based on the CoALA results for the composite layup used for the leading edge which is taken to be the same as for the upper skin (i.e. the thicker skin layup). The value of the leading edge thickness is not very dependent on the value of the radius and so a simple approximation for the radius is sufficient to

estimate the thickness. Using the CATIA model the average value of the radius of the leading edge was found to be 11840mm. The value of is 1.8kg as dictated by CS.25 requirements and varies from 0

degrees at the foremost point of the leading edge to 90 degrees where the leading edge meets the first spar. Based on these values the largest value of the leading edge thickness can now be found:

134

( (

( )

This value of thickness corresponds to that which is required to withstand a collision with a bird at the exact front of the aircraft, i.e. when . To

minimise the weight of the leading edge section the thickness can be reduced for angles greater than zero, the variation of the leading edge skin thickness is illustrated below:

Figure 40 Variation of Leading Edge Thickness due to bird-strike requirement

B.2 Equivalent Skin Thickness Calculations

The bending moment at 10.825m outboard is:

The dimensions of the wingbox were measured from the CATIA model. The average height is 1.7088m and the length of the wingbox is 10.177m. The ultimate load applied to the stringer panels is therefore:

135

From Howes book the value of

can be found using:

Where A is a material constant and recommended to be taken as 150 for quasiisotropic layups as was assumed for the purposes of initial sizing, is a factor

to account for the efficiency of the stringer type chosen, W is the wingbox width and L is the rib pitch. Based on this value of , the value of the equivalent thickness could be found:

This provided an initial estimate for the required skin thickness which could then be improved on in the detail design process.

136

Appendix C Rib Analysis using Strand7

In order to size the ribs of the mid-wing section it was necessary to calculate the shear force and bending moment applied to the rib over its length. Methods of doing this were presented in the Detail Stressing lecture series however these methods were generally intended for use on more conventional aircraft using a two spar or three spar wing. The analysis becomes very complicated when applied to a 5 spar configuration such as is used in the mid-wing section of the FW-12. Therefore in order to determine the required data the Strand7 finite element software package was used. This appendix describes the work done in order to achieve this for the light rib which was designed. The same process was used in the design of the heavy rib only with different loads applied. The length of the rib was measured from the CATIA model to be 14.148m. Two nodes were created, one at 0m and the other at 14.148. These nodes were then connected using a beam element. The elements were assigned an aluminium alloy material closely resembling Al 2099 T83 as this specific material was not available. The height of the beam was set to the average value of the light ribs height which was found to be 2.0992m and the elements were assigned a thickness of 3mm. The width of the flanges had already been decided on as being 4 times the diameter of the bolts used in the connection. The geometry entered into the software is shown below:

137

Figure 41 Geometry of Light Rib Model in Strand 7

The airload distribution which had been previously calculated was then applied to the model After the distribution had been applied the model was divided into 100 equally sized beams, each beam element contained two nodes. The chordwise locations of each of the spars were measured from the CATIA model and the nodes created in the previous step which corresponded to a spar location were identified.

These nodes were then fixed in place to model the beam being simply supported at each of the five spars. The final set up of the model is shown below:

Figure 42 Loads and Boundary Conditions on Strand7 Model

138

The simulation was then run and the shear force and bending moment diagrams were produced from the results, using these dimensions of the ribs could be designed. The resulting diagrams are shown below:
Light Rib Shear Force Distribution
1.50E+04 1.00E+04 5.00E+03 Shear Force (N) 0.00E+00 0 -5.00E+03 -1.00E+04 -1.50E+04 -2.00E+04 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Chordwise Location (m)

Figure 43 Shear Force Distribution

Light Rib Bending Moment Distribution

1.20E+04 1.00E+04 Bending Moment (Nm) 8.00E+03 6.00E+03 4.00E+03 2.00E+03 0.00E+00 -2.00E+03 -4.00E+03 -6.00E+03 Chordwise Location (m) 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Figure 44 Bending Moment Distribution

139

Appendix D CoALA Results

The analysis of the layup required for the components made from CFRP composite materials was done using the in house software programme College of Aeronautics Laminate Analysis or COALA. Below is a sample of the input and output files of the programme, in this case the analysis is for the layup used in the skin of the upper panel which corresponds to layup S27 from ESDU 82013:

140

The output from the programme based on this data gave the required properties of the laminate.

As a specially orthotropic layup was chosen for all composite components, the and entries of the A and D matrices for the layup were equal

to zero. However the programme computed a non-zero value for these entries but, when compared with the other entries of the matrices, it can be seen that these values are negligible and can be taken as zero.

141

The stresses and strains experience by the individual plies was also computed as well as the corresponding failure indices for each ply.

Finally the programme computed the membrane and bending equivalent engineering elastic constants for the layup: 142

The programme could also be used to calculate the effect that temperature changes would have on the composite components, however due to time constraints the analysis was carried out under the assumption of constant temperature.

143

Appendix E Detail Stressing

The following appendix shows the calculations performed to determine the exact dimensions of the various structural components designed during the course of the project. The components presented include the upper skin/stringer panels, the lower skin/stringer panels, the third spar, the light rib, the bulkhead connection flanges and the outboard wing connection lug. The calculations regarding the heavy ribs connection to the main landing gear is also discussed. For the design against shear buckling of the first and second spar the same method was used as for the third spar and the process of designing the light rib was also repeated for many aspects of the heavy rib. As such the calculations are not shown for these components to avoid repetition. Furthermore only the detail stressing for one sub-section of each component is shown in detail. For example the skin/stringer panels are comprised of many separate panels supported between the ribs and frames but only the calculations related to one of these panels is shown. Unless otherwise stated the section used in calculations was the most critically loaded one.

144

Material: M91 Resin with IM7 Fibre Date: 21-08-2012 Component: Mid-wing Forward Section Sub-Component: Upper Skin/Stringer Panel RF Global Buckling Analysis Spanwise Location Bending Moment Panel Length Average Wingbox Height Stringer Pitch Wingbox Length Skin Thickness 10.63333m to 11.2m (-) 10,285,712Nm 566.66mm 1.7088m 150mm 10.177m 3.6mm

The global buckling stress for the whole panel was calculated using the in-house software TW-Panels:

From the loading analysis the bending moment at the spanwise location of the panel is 10,285,712Nm, therefore the ultimate bending moment is:

The cross sectional area of a single panel was also computed by TW panels:

145

Therefore the number of total panel sections as computed by the software is:

Therefore the total cross sectional area of the panel can be computed: ( )

So the applied stress for the panel can be found:

So the reserve factor against failure due to global buckling of the panel is:

1.82

Local Buckling Analysis

The skin must also be designed to withstand local buckling. The local buckling stress was calculated using TW panels:

So the reserve factor against this failure mode is:

1.05

146

Buckling Load TW panels also computes the load which would be required to cause a panel consisting of one stringer and a section of skin as wide as the stringer pitch to buckle and so the reserve factor for the overall buckling of the panel can also be calculated based on the force applied. For the upper panels this load was found to be:

As the panel consists of 68 of these sections the total load that can be support by the entire panel is: 1.09 Therefore the reserve factor in terms of the buckling load is:

Pressurisation Loads

As well as supporting the wing bending loads the skin stringer panels also had to be capable of supporting the loads resulting from the pressure difference between the cargo bay and the external conditions. The cabin altitude is set to 6,000 ft which corresponds to a pressure of 81,199 Pa and the ceiling altitude for the FW-12 is 42,000 ft where the atmospheric pressure is 17,035 Pa. The pressure differential is

147

therefore:

To ensure compliance with CS 25 the structure is designed to be able to withstand twice this pressure, i.e. 128328 Pa. To determine the stress and deformations arising in the skin due to the pressure loads the panels are considered to deform like rectangular plates simply supported by the stringers and the light frame and rib to which they are connected. Based on the rib pitch and the stringer pitch the values of a and b are 566mm and 150mm respectively, therefore:

ESDU 71013 was used to calculate the stresses and deformation of the panels. The parameter used to find the values is: ( ) ( )

Assuming that the panels edges being free in translation and fixed in rotation Figure 2 of ESDU 71013 was used to determine the maximum deflection of the panels:

148

ESDU 71013 allowed for the calculation of the maximum stress at the centre of the plate corresponding to , the stress at the middle surface of the plate which was denoted with a lower case c: and the

total stress at the mid-point of the long-edge

. It should be noted that was stated to be

the stress at the middle surface corresponding to

equal to zero for plates whose edges are free in translation but fixed in rotation. The orientation of each of the stresses calculated is illustrated below:

149

Using Figures 7 and 8 of ESDU 71013 the stresses in the panels could be found:

150

The term relating to

was found to be 0.25, therefore ( )

Similarly, for

: ( ) >2

And finally, for

: ( ) . Comparing this

Therefore the largest stress arising in the panels is

stress value to the maximum allowable stresses for the layup used in the composite skin, which were calculated using CoALA and based on the Tsai-Wu failure theory, allowed for the reserve factor to be found:

151

152

Material: M91 Resin with IM7 Fibre Date: 21-08-2012 Component: Mid-wing Forward Section Sub-Component: Lower Skin/Stringer Panel RF For the lower skin/stringer panels the critical design case is again the prevention of buckling in the panels but this will occur when the lower panel is loaded in compression. The data used to load the panels is from a rolling case combined with a -1g pitch manoeuvre.

Spanwise Location Bending Moment Panel Length Average Wingbox Height Stringer Pitch Wingbox Length Skin Thickness

10.63333m to 11.2m 5,015,535Nm 566.66mm 1.7088m 150mm 10.177m 2.8mm Global Buckling Analysis

Again the buckling stresses were determined using TW panels. For the lower panel the value of the global buckling stress was:

153

As before, the cross sectional area of a single section of one of the lower panels was computed by TW Panels:

So, as before:

Therefore the total cross sectional area of the panel can be computed: ( )

So the applied stress for the panel can be found:

So the reserve factor against failure due to global buckling of the panel is:

2.25 Local Buckling Analysis The local buckling stress was calculated using TW panels:

So the reserve factor against this failure mode is therefore:

1.08

154

Buckling Load For the lower panels the buckling load was found to be:

As the panel consists of 68 of these sections the total load that can be support by the entire panel is:

Therefore the reserve factor in terms of the buckling load is: 1.05

Pressurisation Loads The pressure loads for the lower skin panels were analysed in the same manner as shown previously for the upper panels. All parameters used were the same except for the skin thickness which was 2.8mm instead of 3.6mm as was the case for the upper skin.

The values the term required for calculating based on Figures 2, 7 and 8 was therefore: ( ) ( )

The corresponding value for the deflection term was found from Figure 2 to be:

155

The values of the stresses were found to be:

So, once again

is the predominant stress value. Comparing this value to the

max allowable stress from CoALA for the lower skins layup allows for the reserve factor to be determined: 6.24

From the design calculations performed and presented here it is clear that the skin thicknesses required to support the wing bending loads mean that the panels are more than capable of supporting the loads due to pressurisation. As discussed in the detail design section the dimensions shown in calculations here are those calculated using the TW panels software as opposed to the dimensions the panels would be once manufactured, the difference in dimensions being due to the panels being constructed from plies of a thickness of 0.184mm. In reality the panels would be thicker so the figures calculated here are actually lower limits for reserve factor and the actual panels would be even more capable of supporting the applied loads.

156

Material: 2099 T-83 Date: 21-08-2012 Component: Mid-wing Forward Section Sub-Component: MLG Bay Spar RF The spar that divided the cargo bay from the main landing gear bay had to withstand the loads due to the pressure differential across the spar and also the shear loads resulting from the inertial and aerodynamic loads applied to the aircraft. Pressurisation Requirement Spanwise Location Pressure Differential Horizontal Stiffener Pitch Max Vertical Stiffener Pitch (rib/frame pitch) Thickness Youngs Modulus 6.5m to 6.9m 64,164 Pa 300mm 412.5mm

3.25mm 0.34 78 GPa

According to CS-25 requirements the spar acting as a pressure bulkhead needed to be able to withstand twice the expected operating pressure differential.

ESDU data sheet 71013 was used to determine the stresses and

157

deflections which would be experienced by the spar. To use this data sheet the spar is assumed to be split into a number of panels bordered by the horizontal stiffeners and the points were it is attached to the rib and light frame flanges, the distances between these members give the values of b and a respectively. In order to determine the minimum thickness required of the bulkhead the panel with the largest area was identified, so the ratio of a/b could be found:

The spar and panel in question can be seen below, the CATIA model of the bulkhead has been made partially transparent so that the outline of the stiffening members can be seen, in reality they are on opposite sides of the spar:

Each panel is restrained by connection to a light frame and a rib on its shorter sides and supported by a horizontal stiffener along the longer edges. As the horizontal stiffeners will be able to deform under the

158

pressure loads but the edges which are connected to the flanges will be unable to rotate the plate was considered to have its edges free in translation but fixed in rotation. This meant that Figures 2, 7 and 8 of ESDU 71013 could be used to design the panels.

ESDU 71013 Figure 2 plots the ratio of the maximum deflection of the panels and their thickness against the parameter ( below: ) as shown

To calculate this parameter, the value of r, which takes the Poissons

159

ratio of the material used into account, must be calculated:

From this, the deflection could be calculated by interpolation between the results for the curves where a/b equal 1.25 and 1.5:

Next the stresses acting on the panel could be found, the highest stress in the panel could then be compared to the failure mode stresses to determine the reserve factor. To evaluate the stress in the plate the following two graphs, Figures 7 and 8 respectively, were used:

160

As shown above: ( )

Interpolating between the corresponding values for a/b =1.25 and a/b = 1.5: ( )

So: ( )

From the second graph shown above it was found that: ( ) Therefore:

161

Finally the value for

was determined: ( )

( It is clear from the values calculated that

) is the dominant stress which

arises in the plates of the bulkhead, this proved to always be the case regardless of how the geometry was varied by altering the thickness or the pitch of the stiffeners. As such it was this stress value which was used as a design criteria, first the stress must be below the yield strength of the material:

So the reserve factor against yield of the material is:

Shear Loading As well as acting as a pressure bulkhead the third spar still had to fulfil its role as a spar and support the shear loads applied. It was taken that the shear load is supported by the web of the spar, the main design criterion was to determine the thickness of the web at which the spar will

162

support the load without buckling in shear. To determine this thickness the spar was considered to be divided into multiple panels by the vertical 1.85 and horizontal stiffening members and ESDU data sheet 71005 was then used to determine the required thickness. The most critical panel for the shear loading differed to the most critical panel for pressurisation which depended largely upon the area of the panel whereas the ratio of the panel lengths to each other is more critical for shear buckling as well as the cross-sectional area of the spar. For shear buckling, the most critical panel dimensions were found to be and So:

The panels were fastened to the ribs along their shorter sides and stiffened by the horizontal stiffeners on the longer side, therefore the value of the bucking coefficient K was calculated using the curve corresponding to these conditions on the following graph, ESDU 71005 Figure 1:

163

Resulting in:

The stress at which the panels will buckle ignoring plasticity effects is: ( ) So: ( This value for )

is valid for a material whose Poissons ratio is 0.3, in

164

order to correct for this function of :

must be multiplied by a factor which is a

For high values of

the stress taken to make a plate buckle in shear

may well have exceeded the yield strength of the material. The resulting plastic deformation will alter the buckling behaviour of the plate and so the plasticity reduction factor, , is used to correct for this, determined from graph 2 of ESDU 71005:

With:

165

So for m=22, the plasticity reduction factor is equal to 1. This is because the stress required to buckle the plate is not high enough to lead to complications due to plastic deformation. So the buckling shear stress is as calculated above:

The applied shear stress needs to be calculated to determine the reserve factor. The shear force at a spanwise location of 10.825m is:

There are five spars passing through the mid-wing section. From Howes book the shear force applied to each spar at a given spanwise location can be estimated by:

So for the third spar:

The resulting shear stress can be found by dividing this value by the cross sectional area of the spar at this point:

So the stress due to the shear load is:

166

The torque applied to the wing box will also lead to shear stresses developing in the spars:

The shear stress due to this torque is then:

Where A can be determined as follows:

Therefore:

So finally the total applied shear stress on the spar can be found: 1.03

So the reserve factor against shear buckling is therefore:

The strength of the material was easily sufficient to withstand this applied shear load, taking the UTS of the material in shear to be half of the tensile value: >2

167

168

Material: 2099 T83 Aluminium Alloy Date: 21-08-2012 Component: Mid-wing Forward Section Sub-Component: Aft Rib Flanges RF Bulkhead Area Section Width 15.357m 128328 Pa 5.4m
2

The aft rib flanges were used as attachment points for the pressure bulkhead which comprised the aft wall of the cargo bay area. The connection was achieved by drilling holes through the flanges and bulkhead and securing them together using bolts. The calculations done in order to design these connections are shown below. The worst loading scenario for the connection is the same as the worst pressurisation case as specified in CS 25 where twice the normal operating pressure differential is in effect. First the force which the bolts would have to withstand was found based on the areas over which the pressure differential between the cargo bay and the external conditions would act:

Next the force exerted on the aerodynamic shell surface by the pressure was calculated by estimating the shell to be a cylinder of an equivalent diameter such that the areas of the cylinder and the actual shell were equal:

Knowing the width of the section to be 5.4m:

In light of recommendations given in the Sustaining Design course the bolts chosen were 1/4 UNF bolts which have a diameter of 6.35mm.

169

The maximum strength of these bolts

was found in the Detailed

Stressing Data Sheet to be 18900 N. However the strength of the bolt is effected by its bearing on the sheets it attaches:

1.95385 From page S4B of the data sheet the reduction factor k for these dimensions was found to be 0.985, therefore:

From this the number of bolts required to withstand the applied loads can be easily calculated:

This is the minimum number of bolts that would be required in order to hold the bulkhead and ribs together. However if this number of bolts were used and evenly spaced apart along the stiffeners they would be a distance of 11.5 times their diameter apart. According to the Sustaining Design lecture notes the distance between fasteners should be 8 fastener diameters or less in order to reduce the risk of inter rivet buckling. This failure case was investigated to determine the minimum number of bolts.

Inter Rivet Buckling:

The stress applied to the flanges is assumed to be due to the bending moment caused by the pressure load applied to the entire bulkhead:

This load is shared equally by the 14 stiffeners used to support the bulkhead, for simplicity they are assumed to have an equal height equal to their average height of 2.843m. Considering the applied force to be 170

acting along a beam of this length allows the distributed load to be calculated:

To be conservative, the beam is considered to be simply supported at each bolt, the length of each individual beam is therefore the bolt pitch, , and the maximum bending moment due to the distributed load can be found using the formula:

The value of 8D for the bolt pitch was selected so that the minimum number of bolts would be used which results in reductions in both the maintenance of the structure and its weight. With this value fixed the dimensions of the flanges were found such that the applied stress would not lead to buckling:

The width of the flanges was chosen as 4D = 25.4mm, again this was so that the fasteners were 2D from the free edges of the flange as advised by Mr. Phil Stocking and his lecture notes on the Sustaining Design Course. The thickness of the flanges was determined to be 6.2mm and the moment of inertia of the flanges is therefore:

171

So the applied stress can be determined:

This can then be compared to the inter-fastener buckling stress:

For K = 1.5,

, t = 6.2mm and L = 8D = 50.8mm:

Using this, the buckling stress can be calculated in terms of the

value

of the material using ESDU 76016 Figure 2, note that different notation is used in ESDU 76016 than that used here in calculations which is the notation used in the Detail Stressing Lecture Notes.

172

Therefore:

1.04

The reserve factor against failure of the rib flanges due to buckling is therefore: 1.09

The applied stress is quite high so is also compared to the yield strength of the material:

Based on the selected bolt pitch of 8D the total number of bolts used is 762. As shown above, the tensile strength of each bolt was found to be 18616.5N, therefore the maximum load which the connection can support is: 1.44

So knowing the total load applied to the connection, the reserve factor against the bolts failing in tension is:

173

Material: 2099 T83 Aluminium Alloy Date: 21-08-2012 Component: Mid-wing Forward Section Sub-Component: Light Rib 1, Section 2 RF Web thickness Spanwise Location Average Wingbox Height Rib Pitch Chord length Wingbox length 2mm 9.725m 1.7088m 825mm 14.148m 11.395m

The following calculations detail the work carried out in designing a light rib in the mid-wing section. The rib is cut into multiple sections between any two spars and the work shown here is for Section 2 of the rib is shown outlined in orange in the image below:

The net value of the inertia and air loads which must be transmitted by the rib can be found by determining the difference in the cumulative shear force at a distance of half the rib pitch to either side of the rib, i.e. at 9.325m and 10.125m from the centreline: and Therefore:

This force is then distributed along the length of the rib using a quadratic relationship as suggested by Howe, as discussed in the Detail Design chapter: 174

This is then scaled appropriately such that the integral of the load distribution along the length of the chord is equal to the magnitude of the total force which the rib must transmit:

The quadratic equation shown was then input into Strand7 as a distributed load along the rib. The rib was restrained at the point where it connects to each of the five spars and from this the shear force and bending moment applied along the rib was calculated:

Using this data the usual 1.5 ultimate factor was applied and the ultimate maximum value of shear force applied to the section of the rib at spars 2 and 3 was found. From this the shear force applied to the section could be calculated:

This will tend to make the web of the rib buckle in shear so the rib must be adequately stiffened and must have sufficient thickness to stop this. 175

The web thickness is calculated in the same manner as already shown for the spar webs. However, first the Brazier Loads must be accounted for as this will determine the number of stiffeners required to support the rib which will in turn effect the geometry of the plates loaded in shear.

The crushing pressure due to the wing bending can be found as follows:

The loading per unit length (N) at the spanwise location of the rib is calculated based on the ultimate bending moment, the length of the wingbox and the average height of the wingbox:

From this:

The corresponding crushing stress applied to the ribs is therefore:

This stress can then be compared to the buckling stress for the stiffeners. ( )

The stiffeners have a thickness of 3.5mm and height of 10mm, therefore:

So the radius of gyration, k, of the stiffeners is:

176

So, considering the maximum buckling length of the stiffeners which was measured from the CATIA model to be 880mm: ( )

Therefore:

1.0 2

This value is very small which is reflective of the small cross section and long column length of the stiffeners, it is not possible to use ESDU 76016 Figure 2 to determine the buckling stress directly however, as the lower part of the graph varies linearly, it has been assumed that this linear relationship is still valid for small values such as that calculated above, therefore:

So the reserve factor against the stiffeners buckling can be determined:

The vertical stiffeners were purposefully designed to have a small cross sectional area so that a higher number would be required to resist the Brazier loads. This in turn made the panels considered for shear buckling of the web small enough so that the minimum machinable thickness of 2mm could be used. The panel dimensions were also dependent on the location of the horizontal stiffeners. Two horizontal stiffeners are used to support the rib by taking the bending moment applied due to the airloads transmitted by the rib. The maximum bending moment occurring in the cargo bay section of the rib is -5103Nm. The horizontal stiffeners are considered to act as beams simply supported at the points where they meet the vertical stiffeners which are on the opposite side of the web. The max stress can be found using simply beam bending theory:

177

The stiffeners measure 39mm in the z direction and 15mm in the y direction, therefore:

So:

This is then compared to the strength of the material:

As the total length of the rib is 11.395 and there are 45 stiffeners, the stiffener pitch is therefore 0.2532m. The most critical rectangular section is considered here which was located near the front spar, this dictated the required web thickness which is then kept constant elsewhere.

Therefore 1.0 7 Again using ESDU 71005 and assuming the sides of the plates to be simply supported the buckling coefficient K was found:

So based on this the stress to cause the panels to buckle in shear is: ( ) ( )

This must be compared to the stress applied to the rib. The applied stress results from the shear force applied to the section as calculated above. 178

The area which resists the load is calculated based on the web depth in the region:

The area is therefore:

So the applied shear stress is

So finally the reserve factor against buckling of the web under shear can be evaluated:

The web thickness used was 2mm which is the minimum recommended dimension for machining components, this is why 45 stiffeners were chosen in designing the rib as this configuration led to the minimum possible thickness being used hence producing the lightest possible rib. Heavy Rib Analysis Web thickness Spanwise Location Number of vertical stiffeners Chord length Wingbox length 8.5mm 6.525m 40 19.872m 15.89m

As discussed in the introduction to this section, the method of designing the heavy rib is the same as that described already for the light rib, albeit with different values for the loads applied and dimensions of the rib. However to show that the rib can support the additional load due to the landing gear attachment the following calculation is presented. The load due to the attachment of the landing gear was provided by the aft mid-wing designer as the main landing gear are located in this section. The vertical component of the outboard main trunion attachment load is 179

considered to be applied as a point load:

This load was applied to the Strand7 model representing the rib via the attachment point at the third spar. The load at the second spar was computed to be much considerably lower:

Therefore the total shear force applied across the rib is:

This load is considered for the worst possible gust case and therefore does not need to be multiplied by the ultimate factor. To compute the shear stress resulting from this load the area must be computed. The most critical area is where the maintenance hole is located as shown:

Therefore the height of the section which supports the shear load is:

The area is therefore:

So the applied shear stress is:

180

To determine if the correct thickness has been used the shear buckling stress is again considered. A total of 40 stiffeners are used on the heavy rib whose length is 15.89m, so therefore the spacing is 0.39725m. From the image above the dimensions of the buckling plates can be taken as:

Therefore:

Assuming the plates are simply supported by the stiffeners and using ESDU 71005 the buckling coefficient K is calculated:

The buckling stress is found as before: ( ) Therefore: ( So the reserve factor is: )

181

Material: 2099 T83 Aluminium Alloy Date: 21-08-2012 Component: Mid-wing Forward Section Sub-Component: Outer Wing Connection Lug RF In the chapter on design based on fatigue and damage tolerance a lug was designed to support the loads transmitted from the outer wing to the inner wing. Although the main criterion driving the design was to ensure that the lugs crack growth life would exceed the aircrafts service life the stresses on the lug also had to be checked to ensure it would not fail under the applied loads. This work is presented here.

The geometry of the lug is as shown below, taken from the Detail Stressing data sheet:

With was 12mm.

. The thickness of the lug

The lug will experience tensile stress and shear stress due to the applied load as well as a bearing stress due to the contact between it and the bolt. The bolt is made from a titanium alloy with composition Ti-6Al-4V. 182

Specifically the alloy used is TA10 as listed in the stressing data sheets and from this source the mechanical properties used for the alloy are as follows: Fail Tension Shear Bearing 788 334 Proof 680 255 1037

As discussed in the chapter on fatigue the load transmitted from the outer wing is taken to act at an angle of 20 degrees to the vertical based on the recommendations of Dr. Zhang. The magnitude of the load is 573,198N and acts as shown:

The tensile load is taken to be due to the horizontal component of the force, therefore:

The area over which this force will cause tensile stresses to arise is:

Therefore the tensile stress due to the applied loads is:

183

To determine the reserve factor this is compared to the lower of the failure stress listed for the material and its proof stress when multiplied by 1.5:

Next the shear stress due to the applied load is considered. The load considered is the same as above but the area over which this acts is equal to: ( )

The shear stress is therefore:

Again this is compared to the material properties:

Finally the bearing stress is evaluated for the lug. When evaluating the bearing stress the entire load is used for calculations as the interior surface of the lugs hole which will be loaded is in the direction the force acts in from the centreline.

Therefore the bearing stress is:

184

The reserve factor against the lug failing due to this bearing stress is therefore:

185

Material: 2099 T83 Aluminium Alloy Date: 21-08-2012 Component: Mid-wing Forward Section Sub-Component: Outboard Pressure Bulkhead RF Bulkhead Area Thickness 8.882 128328 Pa 2.5mm

The pressurisation of the cargo bay area is maintained using the third spar as the aft pressure bulkhead, the skin of the aircraft and the outboard pressure bulkhead. The calculations detailing the design of this component are shown here.

The bulkhead is stiffened by integrally machined horizontal and vertical stiffeners on opposing sides of the bulkhead. The pitch of these stiffeners are both 0.2m, i.e.:

The deflection of the bulkhead can be determined using the same method as was used for the third spars pressurisation and for the skin, i.e. using ESDU 71013 and assuming that the panels are simply supported by the stiffeners such that their edges are free in translation but fixed in rotation. So using Figure 2, the deflection of the outboard bulkhead was found to be:

The stress in the panels due to the pressure loads were then found using Figures 7 and 8 as shown before:

186

( )

( )

( ) Again the most critical stress value was yield strength of the material:

so this is compared to the

The thickness of 2.5mm was chosen based on the deflection as thinner web sizes would lead to deflections larger than the web thickness which is not advised.

Next the stiffeners used to support the bulkhead are checked for buckling and strength analysis. The area of the bulkhead is 8.882 therefore the total pressure load acting on the component is: ,

First the dimensions of the horizontal stiffeners are checked. A total of 9 horizontal stiffeners are used and their average length is 4.68425m. Assuming each stiffener supports an equal portion of the applied force then the distributed load is:

The horizontal stiffeners are assumed to be simply supported at the points where they coincide with the vertical stiffeners, therefore using

187

bending beam theory the maximum bending moment due to this applied load is:

Based on this the maximum stress applied to the stiffeners can be varied by adjusting their dimensions. The stiffeners are rectangular in cross section with a thickness of 6mm and height of 18mm, therefore:

From this the max stress in the stiffeners is:

This can now be checked against the yield strength of the material:

As the horizontal stiffeners are placed on the inboard side of the bulkhead the pressure load causes them to be put under compressive stresses, therefore the buckling strength of the stiffeners must also be checked. The radius of gyration of the stiffeners must therefore be calcaulted:

The buckling stress can then be evaluated using ESDU 76016 Figure 2 as shown previously, first though the parameter must be evaluated:

188

So: ( And: )

Therefore, from ESDU 76016 Figure 2, the value of the required parameter is:

So the reserve factor against the applied stress causing the horizontal stiffeners to buckle is:

Next the vertical stiffeners of the outboard bulkhead are analysed, the method for deriving the applied stress is the same as for the horizontal stiffeners. There are 24 vertical stiffeners which have an average length of 1.8057m

As can be seen the bending moment applied to the vertical stiffeners and horizontal stiffeners are very nearly identical, this is because the pressure applied is equal and both sets of stiffeners have equal spacing between individual members. The values would likely be even closer but for the assumption that the length of each stiffener is equal to their 189

average length.

As the vertical stiffeners are put under tensile stress by the load, buckling is not a concern, therefore they can be slightly thinner than the horizontal stiffeners as only the reserve factor against yield is considered. The thickness of the stiffeners is 5mm and their height is 18mm:

Therefore the applied stress is:

This is compared against the tensile strength of the material:

190