Design optimization to minimize wake of wide-body transport aircraft

Abstract

A cutting-edge sustainable airplane can improve performance and enhance profitability are the most significant future concerns for the aviation industry. This research aims to analyse and assess aircraft performance of mid-size transport aircraft through retrofit designs. An optimal design was employed using a non-linear optimization approach under two cases fuselage alone (case 1) and a combination of fuselage-wing-empennage (case 2). These two retrofit concepts were evaluated and compared with the baseline A310–200 aircraft. To compute the objective function for various cases, non-linear solver was used from MATLAB optimization tool box. Additionally, the parametric studies of aerodynamics, structural and operational performance analysis are carried out by using Advanced Aircraft Analysis (AAA) 5.0 software. Sensitivity analyses are performed to assess the overall effectiveness of the optimal design. The key findings of this paper obtained the following parameters as Maximum take-off Weight, empty weight, fuel weight, parasite drag coefficient, rate of climb, take-off distance and landing distance are improved by 0.36%, 26.02%, 10.12%, 4.48%, 27.24%, 13.13% and 9.2% respectively. At the end, the paper provides a clear statement on the managerial perceptions and future insights for the upcoming challenges towards sustainable design.