Fluid-structural design analysis for composite aircraft wings with various fiber properties

Abstract

This study performed an analysis for the fluid-structural design of aircraft wings composed of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs). Specifically, the effects of carbon fibers on structural weight were evaluated. A multiscale computational framework was developed for designing CFRP wings so that even those CFRPs can be considered whose mechanical properties are not available as experimentally-measured data, thereby bridging two different scales by the following processes: 1) a microscale analysis for evaluating the mechanical properties (stiffness and strength) of unidirectional CFRP laminates and 2) a macroscale fluid-structural analysis that involves structural sizing of wingbox structures based on the mechanical properties given by the microscale analysis. To this end, five fibers were examined in this study, namely: T300, T700S, T800H, T800S, and T1100G. It was discovered that T1100G exhibited the lightest wingbox structures, followed by T800S, T800H, T700S, T300. This was mainly due to the difference in a thickness of the lower panels, where the thickness was minimized with T1100G among the five fibers, resulting from the tensile failure mode. Meanwhile, the upper panels under compressive load showed two different failure modes, namely: fiber microbuckling and skin buckling. In the region where the fiber microbuckling was dominant, the panel thickness was in order of the stiffness of the fiber, i.e., the panel made with T1100G having the highest stiffness was thicker than that made with T800S, T800H, T700S and T300, and vice versa in the region where the skin buckling was dominant. Based on the microscale analysis, the aforementioned failure mechanisms are consistent with the fact that a quasi-isotropic laminate with the fibers of higher stiffness is more resistant to tensile load and skin buckling but less resistant to compressive load.