Abstract:
In this thesis a methodology for designing wings for
transport aircraft operating at high subsonic speed is
investigated. Several methods are studied, including more
accurate methods such as the computational methods. These
are used as an addition to the semi-empirical methods.
Several attempts have been made to build a computerised
aircraft design in the past. Mos
*t
of the conceptual
aircraft design programs that are available are based on
the semi-empirical method only. As faster computers become
available, a method for designing a high subsonic aircraft
wing is studied by including computational aerodynamic and
computational structural analysis in the integration
process. SPARV is used as the computational aerodynamic
program and NASTRAN is used as the computational structural
analysis program.
The objectives of this thesis are to study a method of
performing, the conceptual design of win_qs for transport
aircraft operatin_q at high subsonic speed and to
demonstrate that aerodynamics analysis using, Computational
Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and structures analysis using the
Finite Element Method (FEM), can be coupled with the
aircraft synthesis program in a seamless distributed
computing environment. The achievement of these objectives
is demonstrated by, applying the methodology to specific
wing design.
This method has been validated and tested for transport
aircraft operating at high subsonic speed, but application
on military transports may also be valid. An example case
study is presented in this thesis.
Improvement of the method for future development is also
considered in the thesis. These include the use of a more
powerful computational aerodynamics package.
