Topology Optimization of Wing Ribs for Additive Manufacturing

This paper describes the design of a lightweight wing rib structure by combining topology optimisation with additive manufacturing. In addition, a deep feed-forward neural network model is proposed to perform the load prediction for the constructed wing structure incorporated with this optimised rib. The strain energy of the front rib has a minimum strain energy 1330 J for the initial volume state when the topology is not optimised for lightweighting. The relative error of the load prediction values obtained by the output layer of the deep feed-forward neural network is less than 0.02%. The absolute error of the small load prediction was less than 0.30 N. The presented results demonstrate the viability of additive manufactured rib and its implementation in global wing load prediction model for faster designs.