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Comparison of structural topology, shape and sizing optimization of an aircraft fuselage door surround structure
Publikationstyp
Conference Presentation
Date Issued
2017-11-08
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Ambrozkiewicz, Olaf
Institut
Citation
German SIMULIA Regional User Meeting 2017: (2017)
Contribution to Conference
Peer Reviewed
true
The ongoing development of additive manufacturing processes allows for building large-scale structures with dimensions of several meters. Together with structural optimization techniques, lightweight structures with a high specific stiffness can be designed and manufactured. One promising field of application are airframe structures. However, the difference in orders of magnitude of the whole part in a range of meters to the size of individual features of millimeters makes the optimization a computationally demanding task.
In the current work, a fuselage panel with door cutout (i.e. a door surround structure) is optimized using different well-known optimization techniques. Topology optimization is expected to be the most flexible approach. However, if the optimal solution consists of thin-walled stiffeners, it is extremely expensive to derive such a design with topology optimization. Therefore, alternatively an isogrid of stiffeners is considered and optimized with shape and sizing optimization. For shape optimization, the height of the stiffeners is treated as variable. For sizing optimization, the thickness is varied.
The current work compares all three optimization approaches (topology, sizing and shape optimization) in terms of effort versus performance of the optimized part. Though topology optimization in general allows for describing the solution obtained by the other approaches, it requires a very fine mesh to represent thin-walled stiffeners. Similar designs with the same performance are also obtained by shape or sizing optimization at significantly less computational cost.
In the current work, a fuselage panel with door cutout (i.e. a door surround structure) is optimized using different well-known optimization techniques. Topology optimization is expected to be the most flexible approach. However, if the optimal solution consists of thin-walled stiffeners, it is extremely expensive to derive such a design with topology optimization. Therefore, alternatively an isogrid of stiffeners is considered and optimized with shape and sizing optimization. For shape optimization, the height of the stiffeners is treated as variable. For sizing optimization, the thickness is varied.
The current work compares all three optimization approaches (topology, sizing and shape optimization) in terms of effort versus performance of the optimized part. Though topology optimization in general allows for describing the solution obtained by the other approaches, it requires a very fine mesh to represent thin-walled stiffeners. Similar designs with the same performance are also obtained by shape or sizing optimization at significantly less computational cost.
Subjects
Topology optimization
Sizing optimization
Shape optimization