DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF THIN WALLED SEMI-MONOCOQUE WING STRUCTURES USING DIFFERENT STRUCTURAL IDEALIZATIONS IN THE PRELIMINARY DESIGN PHASE

In modeling an aircraft wing, structural idealizations are often employed in hand calculations to simplify the structural analysis. In real applications of structural design and analysis, finite element methods are used because of the complexity of the geometry, combined and complex loading conditions.This article gives a comprehensive study on the effect of using different structural idealizations on the design and analysis of thin walled semi-monocoque wing structures in the preliminary design phase. In the design part of the article, wing structures are designed using two different structural idealizations that are typically used in the preliminary design phase. In the structural analysis part, finite element analysis of one of the designed wing configurations is performed using six different one and two dimensional element pairs which are typically used to model the sub-elements of semi-monocoque wing structures. The effect of using different finite element types on the analysis results of the wing structure, which is designed by the simplified method using two different idealization approaches, is investigated. Comparisons are also made between the analysis results of the finite element solution and the simplified method, and the applicability of the simplified method in the preliminary design phase is investigated for the wing configuration studied in the article. During the analysis study, depending on the mesh size used, conclusions are also inferred with regard to the deficiency of certain element types in handling the true external load acting on the wing structure.