Structural Design and Optimization of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Wing for SAE Aero Design Challenge

Abstract

Aircraft design is a multi-disciplinary iterative design process which follows a Systems Engineering approach and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle design follows one such design methodology. This paper is an attempt to formulate the structural design process for a UAVwing and subsequent optimizationfor SAE India Aero Design Challenge 2017.The design starts with the identification of structural design parameters and challenge requirements in the Pre-design/Conceptual Design phase. Based on the engineering values, a mathematical interface is coded in MATLAB to calculate the mechanical equivalents for the wing at individual sections and to prepare an internal structural layout adhering to the selected material properties. The structural design of the wing is then modelled in Solidworks and final mass is calculated in the Preliminary Design phase. For initial estimates, the static structural analysis of the layout is performed theoretically.The final design of the wing is then fed in ANSYS Finite Element Solver for Static Structural analysis. Now, successive iterations are performed for the optimization of a critical structural parameter with bound constraints directly affecting the mass of the structure using MATLAB in the Detailed Design phase. The optimized version is then finally validated.