Aircraft Structural Components
Aircraft Structural Components
Aircraft Structural Components
COMPONENTS
Livil Lyle
PR15AE1004
EARLIEST
AIRCRAFT
Wooden Biplanes
The majority
configuration
of
WWI
aircraft
were
based
upon
this
Figure 2.2 Biplane fighter aircraft of WWI Breguet 14 & Sopwith Camel
Wooden Monoplanes
Bleriot XI (1909)
Fokker D.VII
Fokker DR-1
There was a fairly gradual change-over from the use of wood to the use
of metal from WWI onwards, though the Junkers J-1 monoplane (1910)
was built entirely from metal (steel tubing & thin sheet iron
coverings) while the Fokker DR-1 triplane (1917) also used steel tubing
for fuselage truss members.
Junkers J-1
Fokker DR-1
A major reason for the greater use and adoption of metal for
the airframe was due to the short supply of spruce
directly after WWI.
Hawker Fury
Stressed-Skin Construction
A major universal breakthrough in aircraft structural design occurred in the 1930s, with
the advent of stressed-skin or semi-monocoque construction methods. This arose
because of the major problems caused by the standard internal cross-bracing in the
fuselage as aircraft developed requirements to carry passengers & payload internally.
Designers soon recognized that the designs applicable to flying boat fuselage construction
were also appropriate for transport aircraft use.
The main structural advantage is that the skin is then an integral load-carrying working
part of the overall structure.
Soon after the fuselages came stressed-skin wings. This was mainly driven by
the US designers, who were dominant in building large capacity transports &
bombers at that time, e.g. the B-9 and B-10 bombers; the Boeing 247, DC-1,
DC-2 and DC-3 airliners.
By this stage, the standard airframe was of aluminium alloy construction with
a structural load carrying skin riveted to frames, longerons (for fuselage) or
spars (for wing), ribs & stringers.
Major
Aerostructures
Developments since
WWII
Douglas DC-6
Pressurized Fuselages
Lockheed Constellation
Aeroelasticity Problems
Divergence
Manufacturing Techniques
Integral Construction
Increased aircraft speeds, allied with the advent of the turbojet propulsion era and
design against metal fatigue, led to the need for thicker wing skins. These were
consequently more difficult to wrap around the internal structural framework. By the
1950s, the skins were usually pre-formed by rolling or, alternatively, by stretchforming. By the late 50s integral construction was commonly being used to
form the skin and stringers as one. These would be machined from a solid slab
of aluminium alloy with perhaps 95% of original material removed.
Advantages include:
Rounded windows,
High Speed
Problems
A USAF SR-71 high-speed reconnaissance aircraft
Swept Wings
After WWII, major wing structural design changes were caused and
forced by adopting Busemanns wing sweep theory for reducing highspeed wing drag.
Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitcomb_area_rule
for more details.
Thin Wings
Much thinner wings were needed as aircraft speeds continued to increase during the
1950s and 60s, due to aerodynamic considerations (in order to reduce the magnitude of
the wave drag due to thickness component). An example includes the Lockheed F-104
Starfighter (1956) with a cruise speed in excess of Mach 2 and a wing t/c ratio of only
3.4%. The adoption of such thin wing sections led to the common use of multi-cell &
multi-spar wing structures:
Kinetic Heating
Concorde (1976)
Titanium alloys used for the forward fuselage skin & frames and
high-strength H-11 steel used for the stiffeners.
Welded joints.
Computing Advances
Computers were first used in earnest on aircraft during XB-70 Valkyrie structural
development programme. The standard structural hand calculations were heavily
supported by extensive use of matrix structural analysis methods on computers.
All of the major components were analyzed using the force method of linear
elasticity with three basic elements (rod, shear panel & built-up beam) used for
the modeling. The computer codes used by the engineers were all written in the
assembly language and were run on an IBM 7095 mainframe computer.
Finite element analysis was used first of all during the structural support and
development phases of the Boeing 747 airliner design programme in the mid
1960s. The improved analysis capabilities (all later verified through testing) led
directly to the evolution of several new design concepts. This included the
aeroelastic tailoring of the nacelle & wing/body intersection in order to reduce
potential flutter problems and also allowed for the major extensive use of
composite materials.
Advanced
Materials
Technology
Sandwich Structures
DeHavilland Mosquito
Disadvantages include:
Composites
Composites are simply combinations of two or more different materials so have been in general use for
many years in differing forms:
The DeHavilland Mosquito fuselage used spruce fairings on balsa wood core, as described earlier.
Fibreglass/polyester composites were used for the radomes on many WWII aircraft.
Fibreglass was used for the facing skins on aluminium honeycomb sandwich panels for the Boeing 747 control
surfaces (1969).
The modern conception of a composite material, however, is that of Carbon-fibre Reinforced Plastics
(CFRP), which is becoming increasingly dominant and of widespread use in the aerospace field, e.g. CFRP
makes up:
26% of the total weight of the AV-8B Harrier (1981) including the wing, forward fuselage, horizontal tail.
Aluminium/lithium alloys.
Aramid/aluminium laminates.
Thermoplastics, etc.
Thank You!