Hindawi

International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

Volume 2020, Article ID 8841623, 11 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8841623

Research Article
Fully Parametric Optimization Designs of Wing Components

Zhendong Hu , Ju Qiu , and Fa Zhang

Beijing Key Laboratory of Civil Aircraft Structures and Composite Materials, Beijing Aeronautical Science & Technology Research
Institute of COMAC, Beijing 102211, China

Correspondence should be addressed to Fa Zhang; [email protected]

Received 16 April 2020; Revised 6 September 2020; Accepted 25 September 2020; Published 14 October 2020

Academic Editor: Seid H. Pourtakdoust

Copyright © 2020 Zhendong Hu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

An optimization technique called shape-linked optimization, which is different from the traditional optimization method, is
introduced in this paper. The research introduces an updated wing optimization design in an effort to adapt to continuous
structure changes and shapes while optimizing for a lighter weight of the structure. The changing tendencies of the thickness of
wing skins and the cross-section areas of the wing beams are fitted to continuous polynomial functions, whose coefficients are
designed as variables, which is a different engineering approach from the size variants of the thickness and the area in the
traditional optimization. The structural strength, stiffness, and stability are constraints. Firstly, this research unearths the
significance of utilizing a modernized optimization process which alters the production of the traditional 12 or over 12 segment
wing design and applies new approaches and methods with less variables that contribute to expedited design cycles, decreased
engineering and manufacturing expenditures, and a lighter weight aircraft with lower operating costs than the traditional design
for the operators. And then, this paper exemplifies and illustrates the validity of the above claims in a detailed and systematic
approach by comparing traditional and modernized optimization applications with a two-beam wing. Finally, this paper also
proves that the new optimized structure parameters are easier than the size optimization to process and manufacture.

1. Introduction Another limitation was that a wing structure was usually

treated as a cantilever beam or an uncomplicated truss for
In the last century, the design of the wing was quite simple and more convenient stress analyses. In those years, the mechan-
inefficient, but now, the wing is a little light and generates signif- ics of material method employed by engineers was available
icantly more lift with the less drag. More importantly, today’s for simple structural members subject to specific loadings
wings withstand a wider range of harsh flight conditions. How such as axially loaded bars, prismatic beams in a state of pure
were these improvements developed? Wing design improve- bending, and circular shafts subject to torsion. The solutions
ments, generally speaking, fell into three successive phases. could under certain conditions be superimposed using the
In the first phase, the flight loads of the wing were calcu- superposition principle to analyze a member undergoing
lated by hand, and the structural strength or stiffness was combined loading. Some experts started to use optimization
checked manually. The previous engineers typically consid- method to do their design tasks.
ered the spanwise and chordwise aerodynamic loads, accord- Rao [1–3] introduced optimization of airplane wing
ing to Figure 1. structures under landing, gust, and taxiing loads. And a
As can be seen, the wing lift distribution along the span methodology had been presented for the automated opti-
was approximately elliptical, while chordwise was parabolic. mum design of airplane wing structures under three types
The total forces of a single wing were defined by the following of loads. The procedure was demonstrated by considering
equation (1): the design of two example wings: one based on simple
beam-type analysis and the other based on finite element
3:5 × g × mtakeoff analysis. The procedure was expected to be useful in the pre-
L= : ð1Þ
2 liminary design stages.
2 International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

Pressure Pressure

Spanwise Chordwise

(a) (b)

Figure 1: Spanwise load distribution (a) and chordwise load distribution (b). Unit: Pa.

In the second stage, with the early use of computers, engi- aerodynamic loads to guide design development. Finite ele-
neers exploited programs to compute the aerodynamic load ment technology for structural analysis is also now sophisti-
by 2D methods only, such as Double-lattice Method, due to cated enough to handle just about any geometric shape
restrictions in available computer memory, and access time wings made of advanced composite materials as long as suffi-
to facilities. Rough experiments in wind tunnels allowed cient computing power is available. Its applicability includes,
them to supplement the computational data. In structural but is not limited to, linear, nonlinear analysis, solid-fluid
analysis, elasticity methods were becoming available for sim- interactions, materials that are isotropic, orthotropic, or aniso-
ple structures using numerical approximation methods, tropic, and external effects, consisting mainly of static,
while the Finite Element Method was commonly used to dynamic, thermodynamic, and environmental factors. As the
complicated structures. The pre- and postprocessing tools, optimization methods are proposed and the computing capa-
such as aerodynamic computation or structural analysis, bility of the computers rapidly enhances, the optimization
were almost nonexistent. During this period, engineers had technology for wings develops by leaps and bounds. During
known how to manually revise the contours or structures of this period, so many experts have done more optimization
the wings to better satisfy the design requirements, and many works by advanced optimization technologies.
iterations helped them find the optimal design. At that time, Ronzheimer et al. [6] achieved a good goal to optimize the
lots of experts had many tries to optimize the structures. performance of a regional transport aircraft using high fidelity
Joo-Ho Choi (2002) addressed the shape design sensitiv- CFD- and CSM-methods. The geometrical inputs for the dis-
ity analysis of a plane arch structure based on the variational ciplines CFD and CSM were generated by CATIA V5 based
formulation of a curved beam in linear elasticity. The sensi- on those design parameters which were prescribed by a SUB-
tivity expression derived using the material derivative con- PLEX optimizer. CFD was at first used to calculate the drag in
cept was very general and could thus be applied to complex cruise flight with RANS and secondly to provide aerodynamic
arch shapes and their variation in a general direction. This forces from Euler solutions from certain maneuver cases for a
method should be suitable for the aircraft beam’s design. structural sizing of the wing to yield the wing weight. As with
Weigang and Weiji [4] thought if posterior preference the structural calculations the wing deformations were avail-
optimization algorithm was used to solve this problem, the able, these were used to deform the CFD mesh and to evaluate
huge time consumption would be unacceptable in engineer- drag and forces on the corresponding flight shapes. This
ing practice due to the large amount of evaluation needed method may be used to the wing design.
for the algorithm. So, a new interactive optimization algo- Oktay, Akay, and Merttopcuoglu [7] used a structural
rithm, i.e., interactive multiobjective particle swarm optimi- topology optimization algorithm by using fluid-structure inter-
zation (IMOPSO), was presented in their work. It was action method to account for flow-induced forces as in the case
worth extending in aviation. of air vehicles. The topology optimization tool used for design
James et al. [5] described that their work was unique in was the material distribution technique. Because reducing the
that the working domain of the design problem was given weight requires numerous calculations, the CFD and structural
by the full three-dimensional region inside the wing skin, optimization codes were parallelized and coupled via a code/-
with no assumptions being made with regard to the number, mesh coupling scheme. In their study, the optimum rib topol-
location, or orientation of the structural members. It intro- ogy had been determined for the concept phase.
duced the topology technology for an independent wing. Kenway and Martins [8] introduced multipoint high-
In the current phase, advanced computers are used fidelity aerostructural optimization of a transport aircraft
throughout the world, so they are no longer a significant lim- configuration.
iting factor. In preprocessing, engineers can quickly establish Liu et al. [9] showed that the integrated global-local opti-
high fidelity models to simulate the wing’s contour and struc- mization approach had been applied to subsonic NASA
tures directly using computers. The increased reliability of the common research model (CRM) wing, which proved the
data input naturally implies a more reliably computed solu- methodology’s application scaling with medium fidelity
tion. After calculations, postprocessing now offers detailed FEM analysis. Both the global wing design variables and
resultant images and vivid animations. In addition, both the local panel design variables were optimized to minimize
top-ranking wind tunnel and CFD (Computational Fluid the wing weight at an acceptable computational cost. The
Dynamics) methods, which are widely applied to solve the structural weight of the wing had been, therefore, reduced
aerodynamic loads by using Euler equations or Navier–Stokes by 40%, and the parallel implementation allowed a reduction
equations, have the ability to provide better information for in the CPU time by 89%.
International Journal of Aerospace Engineering 3

Boopathy, Rumpfkeil, and Kolonay [10] demonstrated Zhao and Kapania [18] introduced bilevel programming
structural sizing optimizations of a fighter wing configura- weight minimization of composite flying-wing aircraft with
tion in the presence of uncertainties in structural parameters curvilinear spars and ribs. Zhang and Xu [19] demonstrated
and material properties. And the design variables and input the two-stage hybrid optimization, combined with the
parameters were considered to have uncertainties and were Taguchi-based grey relational optimization and NSGA-II
treated as aleatory and epistemic random variables in the based on surrogated model, was proposed to achieve design
optimization process. They also indicated that a robust opti- of honeycomb-type cellular structures under out-of-plane
mization framework under mixed epistemic and aleatory dynamic impact. Long et al. [20] proposed an efficient
uncertainties using surrogate models for an application of decomposition-based optimization framework using adap-
interest to aircraft structural engineers. tive metamodelling for expensive aero-structure coupled
Andrews and Perez [11] performed a multidisciplinary wing optimization problems. The aero-structure coupled
analysis which examined the aerodynamic performance of a optimization problem was decomposed into 2D airfoil opti-
box-wing regional jet aircraft throughout its mission and mization and 3D wing optimization. Using the optimized air-
used a fully stressed beam analysis to examine the structure foil, the wing optimization stage was further decomposed
of the wing in detail. into system-level optimization and subsystem-level optimi-
Pahange and Abolbashari [12] investigated the numerical zation. The proposed method was demonstrated on aero-
modeling of bird strike on an aircraft wing leading edge structure coupled optimization of a high aspect ratio wing.
structure and tried to minimize simultaneously structural A mechanism/structure/aerodynamic multidisciplinary
mass and wing skin deformation. They found that the influ- optimization platform based on the iSIGHT software was con-
ence of dimensions of wing internal structural components structed for this smart high-lift system by Tian et al. [21]. Raj-
on the wing’s damage after the collision with a bird was also pal, Kassapoglou, and De Breuker [22] introduced aeroelastic
studied. In this way, a low-weight leading edge structure to optimization of composite wings including fatigue loading
resist bird strike incidents was sought. requirements. Zhao and Kapania [18] indicated bilevel pro-
Dou and Jensen [13] extended the current structural opti- gramming weight minimization of composite flying-wing air-
mization procedure to the more general case of modal analysis craft with curvilinear spars and ribs. Farsadi and Asadi [23]
of nonlinear mechanical systems. The iterative optimization showed sequential quadratic optimization of aeroelastic
procedure consisted of calculation of nonlinear normal energy of twin-engine wing system with curvilinear fiber path.
modes, solving an adjoint equation system for sensitivity anal- Recent years, for the complex optimization problem with
ysis, and an update of design variables using a mathematical different disciplines and a large number of design variables, a
programming tool. Also, they demonstrated the method with considerably high-dimensional design space is required,
examples involving plane frame structures where the harde- which creates an exponential challenge for the optimization.
ning/softening behavior was qualitatively and quantitatively If we focus on building up a real model of the structure and
tuned by simple changes in the geometry of the structures. other disciplines adopt high-fidelity surrogate models, it will
Hernández et al. [14] showed that the use of the Phase Reso- be time-saving and dimension-reducing.
nance Method or so-called Normal Mode Testing had been used Unal, Lepsch, and McMillin [24] discussed response sur-
for GVT of large aircrafts, which essentially consisted of applying face methods for approximation model building techniques
single sine excitations at the structural natural frequencies. which were central composite designs, minimum point
Aage et al. [15] showed an amazing phenomenon, through designs, and overdetermined D-optimal designs for deter-
the topological optimization of the wing structure. The opti- ministic experiments. Ragon et al. [25] presented bilevel
mized wing structure is similar to the biological skeleton that design of a wing structure using response surfaces. Kolonay
can bear loads in nature. This is the result of millions of years and Kobayashi [26] introduced optimization of aircraft lift-
of evolution of nature, which conforms to the law of nature. ing surfaces using a cellular division method.
The machine design, e.g., aircraft structures, also obeys it. This paper uses a weighted least squares to fit continuous
Winklberger et al. [16] introduced three configurations functions to express discrete structures, such as skin thick-
with different thread insert lengths and positions that were ness using quadratic space function, beam’s cross-section
tested and compared. Their detailed numerical stress analysis properties in local coordinates using one dimensional qua-
showed that the hoop stress in the surrounding tube of the dratic space function, and the coefficient of functions are
threaded connection was at the maximum, which might cause defined as design variables, which can greatly reduce them,
crack initiation and further lead to failure of the tie-rod. i.e., the dimension reduction (see Design Study).
Finally, they made a conclusion that the stress concentration Generally, the research of structural optimization is
amplitude of the configuration with the highest fatigue life divided into four levels, which are sizing optimization, shape
showed the lowest values at the open end of the tube. optimization, topology optimization, and topography opti-
Wang et al. [17] obtained results from the integrated mization. Our current optimization is between size optimiza-
optimization which provided designers with a wealth of tion and shape optimization, and it can get optimized
information in the preliminary phase and important refer- structures similar to those after topology optimization.
ences for further design. A multidisciplinary optimization The following of the paper is organized in the different
research of aerodynamics/structure/stability for a large air- parts. The first one introduces the wing design and the
plane in a detailed design phase had already been performed experts’ work in this field. The second one is the introduction
in the study. of the optimization technique, the optimization parameters
4 International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

Rib flanges

Front rib webs

Spar flanges

Y Spar webs
+
X
Z
Y Rib webs
X
Z
(a) (b)
Stringers

Upper skin

Y Lower skin
X
Z

(c)

Figure 2: FEM of the wing (a–c).

of the wing, and discussion for optimization results, follow- This is the classic optimization problem statement. Stated
ing this part, which is a summary section and future work. in words, this says that it is desired to minimize an objective
function subject to three types of constraints. According to
2. Main Section the present study, the objective, design variables, and design
constraints are listed in Design Study.
The main part introduces the whole optimization, including
the selection of optimization methods, the definitions of the 2.2. Pointer Algorithm. In iSIGHT platform (2008) [27], the
design variables, and constraints. Pointer is a global optimal tool. The Pointer technique con-
sists of a complementary set of optimization algorithms: lin-
2.1. Optimization Algorithm and Response Surfaces. This sec-
ear simplex, sequential quadratic programming (SQP),
tion contains optimization principles, optimization methods,
downhill simplex, and genetic algorithms (GA). In the pro-
and the response surface.
cess of optimization, linear simplex deals with the constant
2.1.1. Primary Optimization Equations. The typical optimiza- function; the best design is obtained quickly by use of SQP
tion problem is given mathematically by equations (2) to (6): with good convergence and numerical stability near the peak
of the problem; the downhill simplex method requires only
Minimize : F ðxÞ objective function: ð2Þ function evaluations, not derivatives, but it may frequently
be the best method to use if the figure of merit is get-some-
Subject to : p j − 1 ≤ 0, j = 1, m inequality constraints: thing-working-quickly for a problem whose computational
burden is small; GA is to extract optimization strategies
ð3Þ nature uses successfully—known as Darwinian Evolutio-
hk − 1 = 0, k = 1, l equality constraints: ð4Þ n—and transform them for application in mathematical
optimization theory to find the global optimum in a defined
X li ≤ X i ≤ X Ui , i = 1, n side constraints: ð5Þ phase space. The Pointer method organically combines four
8 9 kinds of algorithms together and complements each other,
> X > which makes this analysis successful and efficient.
> 1>
>
> >
>
> X2 >
> > These optimization algorithms essentially can be classi-
>
> >
>
>
> >
> fied into two groups: gradient-based methods and
< • >
> = nongradient-based methods. The former ones determine
X= design variables: ð6Þ the optimal design using the gradient information from a
>
>
> • > >
>
>
> >
> design sensitivity analysis. The recursive formulas of them
>
> >
>
> >
> • are derived based on the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) neces-
> >
>
: >
> ; sary conditions for an optimal design. SQP methods were
Xn developed for nonlinear gradient optimization in the last
International Journal of Aerospace Engineering 5

Table 1: Design variables of the wing.

Design parts Variables

Thickness∗ 1
Upper and lower skin Coefficients of 2nd order polynomial in the variables x, y, and z
Spar web Coefficients of 2nd order polynomial in the variables x, y, and z
Rib web Coefficients of piecewise linear polynomial in the variables x, y, and z
Front rib web Lower and upper bound
∗2
A, I 1 , I 2 , I 12 , J
Spar flange Coefficients of 2nd order polynomial in the variables x, y, and z
Rib flange (CROD) Coefficients of piecewise linear polynomial in the variables x, y, and z
Stringer Coefficients of 2nd order polynomial in the variables x, y, and z
Ribs’ spanwise percent Lower and upper bound
Spars’ chordwise percent Lower and upper bound
1
Thickness was from 0.005 m to 0.01 m. 2A was from 10-4 m2 to 10-6 m2; I 1 is from 10-10 m4 to 10-8 m4; I 1 is from 10-9 m4 to 10-7 m4; J is from 10-10 m4
to 10-8 m4.

Z Z
Y Y
X X

Structural partitions of traditional design Thickness distribution of current design

(a) (b)

Figure 3: Comparison of design variables of wings.

century. They are used for the problems where the objective W2
function and the constraints are twice continuously differen- t2
tiable. In order to reduce the computational cost, approxima-
tion concepts were constructed by experts. In combination
with other techniques, such as constraint deletion, reciprocal H t
approximation, and design variable linking, it has been suc-
cessfully applied in structural optimization. It is, however,
reported that the gradient-based methods normally find the t1
optimal point close to the starting design point; in other
words, it is possible to get a local optimum but not the global W1
one. In terms of this weakness, the nongradient methods do
Figure 4: A cross-section size of the beam.
not need gradient information at the design points. These
methods contain the typical nature-inspired evolutionary
methods, such as GA, which have recently demonstrated performance. Globally and locally searching the optimal
their success as well as popularity in engineering applica- point can switch automatically.
tions. Furthermore, the GA methods have been extensively Besides, the Pointer algorithm in iSIGHT is a flexibility-
applied in commercial aircraft wing optimization. Those based approach for the solution of the engineering design
methods are successful applications with the decentralized problems. The methodology is aimed at enhancing the design
decision-making for exploiting the optimal design in the process, reducing the number of costly iterations, and flexibly
global design space. exchanging the dissimilar algorithms to solve the practical
Pointer can efficiently solve a wide range of problems in a engineer problems.
fully automatic manner due to a special automatic control of
both the gradient-based algorithm and nongradient algo- 2.3. Response Surfaces. A focus of current research on optimi-
rithm. The goal of the Pointer technique is to make optimiza- zation approaches is to improve the quality of approxima-
tion more accessible to nonexpert users without sacrificing tions and reduce the number of iterations and thus the total
6 International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

Optimization
design model

Sensitivity analysis

Delete elements
Optimization Optimization
analysis model 1 analysis model 2

Design Update

Load approximation Load approximation

Objective Update Design

Design variables
Static and buckling Static and buckling
Design constraints analysis analysis
Design Variables

Satisfying thickness No
constraints ?
Variables

Yes

No Satisfying constraints,
convergence?

Yes

End

Figure 5: Flowchart of the wing optimization procedure.

optimization time. Surrogate models are worldwide used in pendent variables. The coefficients of the aerodynamic
the computational expensive optimizations, such as response loads were taken as dependent variables.
surfaces optimization, Taylor series, neural networks
method, and Kriging. In the present study, it uses computa- 2.4. Aircraft Wing
tionally cheap hierarchical surrogate models to replace the
exact and computationally expensive objective functions to 2.4.1. Design Study. The aircraft wing can be decomposed
reduce the computational cost. into some panels that are bordered by the spars and ribs.
Combining with central composite design (CCD) and The span of the wing is about 20 m. The root and tip
curved surface fitting method, the response surface model chords are 10 m and 6 m, respectively. The airfoil thickness
of the flight load was constructed, and the mean square ratio is 0.0416, and the sweep angle is 30°. As illustrated in
error (MSE) was used to judge the merits of the approxi- Figure 2, the finite element model of the wing was estab-
mate model, modify the experimental design parameters, lished in the PCL functions of MSC [28]. This model con-
and adjust the scope of design variables, etc. The formula- sisted of 8 ribs, 2 spars, 7 stiffeners, and upper and lower
tion (listed in equation (7)) of a response surface is surface skins. The front spar was positioned at 15% of
defined using a second-order approximation function of chord and the rear spar at 85% of chord. 7 stringers were
the form. attached to the skin. Aluminum material was used for the
entire model.
n n n The wing design problem involves the wing’s geometry
Y ðX Þ = a0 + 〠 bi xi + 〠 cii xi 2 + 〠 cij xi x j : ð7Þ dimension problems, for instance, spar and rib arrange-
i=1 i=1 ijði<jÞ ments, etc. The plan view layout of an aircraft wing is to min-
imize its weight subject to constraints on stress, deflection,
The polynomial coefficients of the skin and web’s and buckling. It also is developed in conjunction with the
thickness and the beam properties were selected as inde- thickness of the skin and web, the beam element with its
International Journal of Aerospace Engineering 7

6500

6000

5500

5000

Mass, kg 4500

4000

3500

3000

2500

2000

1500

1000
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600

Design cycle

Figure 6: Optimization history.

cross-sectional area, moments of inertia, torsional constant, Table 2: Comparisons of preoptimization and postoptimization
and the rod element for just cross-sectional area. Seven skin location distribution and weight.
stringers are arranged between the front and rear spars.
The definition of each variable with respect to the wing’s Conditions Initial case Case 1 Case 2
geometry is given in Table 1. Front spar 15.00 16.08 16.33
The locations of design variables are depicted in Figure 2. Chordwise percent (%)
Rear spar 85.00 83.61 83.53
According to the above definition, the number of design
variables is diminished largely, for example, the plane and 1st rib 0.00 0.00 0.00
beam elements. 2nd rib 14.29 14.76 14.70
The traditional wing optimization design mainly includes 3rd rib 28.57 29.22 29.24
1D and 2D structure, which may have a partition thickness of 4th rib 42.86 43.39 43.34
more than 12 (see Figure 3), while the functional thickness Spanwise percent (%)
5th rib 57.14 57.32 57.47
expression proposed in this study has 10 coefficient design
6th rib 71.43 72.46 73.18
variables (see equation (8)).
7th rib 85.71 86.95 87.94
A complete space quadratic term is written in equation
(8). 8th rib 100.00 100.00 100.00
Mass (kg) 1934.14 1711.47 1694.5

f ðX, Y, Z Þ = A0 + A1 ∗ X + A2 ∗ Y + A3 ∗ Z + A4 ∗ X ∗ Y It can be seen that there is a considerable reduction in

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ design variables both in the 2-dimensional and 1-
+ A 5 X Z + A6 Y Z + A7 X X ð8Þ
dimensional elements.
+ A8 ∗ Y ∗ Y + A9 ∗ Z ∗ Z: The wing design problems to minimize its weight subject
to constraints on stress, deflection, and buckling was summa-
As the design of the beam, there may be more than four rized as follows:
sections in the span direction. See the following Figure 4 for
the section size. Minimize : mass
If we consider four segments, there are 6 design variables
Subject to : σ ≤ 4:2E8 Pa
for each one. The total is 24 design variables. If taking cross- ð10Þ
section area and moment of inertia, A, I 1 , I 2 , I 12 , J, as design γ ≤ 50
variables in the local coordinate system, which can be defined
as one dimensional quadratic function listed in equation (9), f ≥ 1:0:
we have a total of 15 variables, due to three coefficients in
equation (9). Here, σ is the yield stress for the material; γ is the deflec-
tion angle of the tip wing; f is the buckling factor.
f ðX Þ = B0 + B1 ∗ X + B2 ∗ X ∗ X: ð9Þ The boundary condition for the wing was described as:
8 International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

200

180

160

Percent, %/mass, 10 kg
140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0
Front spar

Mass
3rd rib
Rear spar

1st rib

2nd rib

4th rib

5th rib

6th rib

7th rib

8th rib
Initial case

Case 1

Case 2

Figure 7: Comparisons of preoptimization and postoptimization conditions.

Thickness, m 60
0.0065
0.006 50
0.0055
0.005 40
0.0045
0.004 30
0.0035
0.003 20
0.0025
0.002 10

0.0015
0.001
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (m)
0.0005

Figure 8: The thickness distribution of the upper skin (case 2).

The aerodynamic loads of surrogate model acted on the

wing with all degrees of freedom fixed at the root. Figure 9: The section properties of the spar flange along the length
Two cases of models were established. Note, case 1 of the spar (case 2).
referred to the wing with the front rib web; case 2 referred
to the wing without the front rib web. is 2437. From the following historical curve, it appears to
have repeated iterations due to the genetic algorithm’s multi-
2.5. Design Procedure. In this paper, particularly, when the directional search technique.
front rib web thickness was less than 0.0014 m, the front rib Table 2 presents preoptimization and postoptimization
web element would be temporarily deleted. The development distribution of spars and ribs. The changing location of spars
of the optimization procedure is listed in Figure 5. and ribs is depicted in Figure 7.
Table 2 and Figure 7 show that the differences between the
2.6. Numerical Results. The optimization history of the struc- spars and rib locations are small between the preoptimization
tural mass is shown in Figure 6. The number of the iteration and the postoptimization model. It indicates the initial
International Journal of Aerospace Engineering 9

arrangement of the wing is basically reasonable. As can be g: Acceleration of gravity

seen in Table 2, the mass of the wing in case 1 is 11.51% lower p: Inequality constraint function
than that of the initial wing, while that in case 2 is a 12.39% h: Equality constraint function
weight reduction. This indicates that the deletion of the front I 1 , I 2 , I 12 : Moments of inertia
ribs is of great benefit to weight loss. J: Torsional constant
The thickness distribution of the upper skin in postopti- L: Total lift force
mization is shown in Figure 8. The trend is to become thinner l: Number of equality constraint function
as we move from the root to the tip. m: Number of inequality constraint
Figure 9 depicts the section properties of the spar flange. function
The solid line refers to initial design; the dashed line refers to n: Number of design variables
final design. Both the area and the moments of inertia mtakeoff : Takeoff mass
decrease continuously from the root to tip. Xðxi , x j , i, j = 1, nÞ: Design variables
Xl: Lower bound side constraints
u
3. Conclusion X : Upper bound side constraints
YðXÞ: Approximated function
The approach described in this paper has demonstrated that it γ: Wingtip deflection angle
could be capable reducing weight with continuous thickness σ: von Mises stress
and section property changes despite being a discretized model. A0 , A1 , ⋯, A9 : Functional coefficients
In addition, the element deletion was also shown to benefits of B 0 , B 1 , B2 : Functional coefficients.
the weight reduction. Unlike previous design efforts where the
structures are traditionally partitioned to a lot of zones with Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbreviations
numerous design variants, this work represents a very simple
and high efficient approach with parametric expressions, com- CFD: Computational Fluid Dynamics
ing of fewer variables. The proposed approach performs fully CSM: Computational Structural Mechanics
automatic modelling and loading. The parametric wing model RANS: Reynolds equations
as a primary design offers a good starting point for more SQP: Sequential quadratic programming
detailed structural analysis. In a word, this approach is expected GA: Genetic algorithms.
to widely be applied to most of the aircraft parts, such as hori-
zontal tails, a vertical tail, and a fuselage. Data Availability
Additionally, for the current design, almost all of the parts
of the wing are defined as functions, which expresses continu- The data used to support the findings of this study are
ous changes of thickness of the skin and properties of spars included within the supplementary information file (s). (1)
and stiffeners, and optimal results tend to do integrative pro- The node2.bdf data used to support the findings of this study
cessing. For another thing, another advantage of the successive have been used in building the wing model in MSC.Patran.
structure distribution is that it has the lighter weight subject to This is a group of airfoil data, which was copy to MSC.Pa-
the equal load. Commonly, this parametric structure design tran GUI for forming Patran’s PCL (Patran3.ses). (2) The
can be a further 1% through 3% wing weight decrease, com- patran3.ses data used to support the findings of this study
pared with the traditional design (see Figure 3(a)). in Figure 5 are the building-mode file included within the
Besides, a global optimal tool, including a combination article. This file described the process, that is, building-up
group of optimization algorithms: linear simplex, sequential wing model by MSC.Patran. (3) The ee5_right.bdf data used
quadratic programming, downhill simplex, and genetic algo- to support the findings of this study in Figure 5 are the solu-
rithms, which integrates the merits of global and local opti- tion file of MSC. Nastran included within the article. This
mization, performs the optimization of the wing file was obtained, after running the patran3.ses. (4) The
components. This avoids to miss the best point. And also, gonastran. bat and gopatran. bat data used to support the
the approximate model is used to fit the aerodynamic loads findings of this study in Figure 5 are the executable files of
for further time savings. All of the techniques to provide Isight included within the article. gopatran. bat was used to
the primary commercial aircraft design are referenced. call patran. exe to run patran3.ses in Isight, gonastran. bat
All in all, the great thing of this proposal is that it can save was used to call nastran. exe to run ee5_right.bdf in Isight.
a considerable amount of design time and costs. (5) The test1.zmf data used to support the findings of this
study in Figure 5 are the running file in Isight included
within the article. This file was an executable file of Isight.
Nomenclature (6) The Functional_equation data used to support the find-
ings of this study in Figure 5 are the load function included
Symbols within the article. This file was a fitted spatial function.

A: Cross-sectional area Additional Points

a0 , bi , cii , cij : Least-square fit coefficients
FðxÞ: Objective function Further Work. These days, the traditional structural optimi-
f: Buckling factor zation is still size or topology optimization. This proposal
10 International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

method to optimize the structure in line with modern overall [10] K. Boopathy, M. P. Rumpfkeil, and R. M. Kolonay, “Robust
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Conflicts of Interest [12] H. Pahange and M. H. Abolbashari, “Mass and performance
optimization of an airplane wing leading edge structure
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest against bird strike using Taguchi-based grey relational anal-
regarding the publication of this paper. ysis,” Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, vol. 29, no. 4,
pp. 934–944, 2016.
Acknowledgments [13] S. Dou and J. S. Jensen, “Optimization of hardening/softening
behavior of plane frame structures using nonlinear normal
The authors acknowledge the financial supports from the modes,” Computers and Structures, vol. 164, no. 2016,
Special Project of Civil Aircraft of Ministry of Industry and pp. 63–74, 2016.
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2017-F-20). This method is patented by BASTRI. Authorized approach for identification of dynamic parameters of localized
patent number is CN105528481 B. Authorized announce joints of aircraft assembled structures,” Aerospace Science and
date is June 29th, 2018. Technology, vol. 69, no. 2017, pp. 538–549, 2017.
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