Topological Designing and Analysis of the Composite Wing Rib

Abstract

The composite structures in the aerospace industry for in recent decades are widely applied however, at the beginning of the 21st century composites are growing rapidly. The largest companies in the aerospace industry are increasing the volume of composites application of in the structures, and nowadays the volume of composites reaches 50%. The different elements of aircraft and even highly loaded structures such as spars, ribs, skin, etc., are currently made from composites. First of all, this is due to the possibility of a significant reduction in the weight of the structure, as well as a decreasing in production costs. The advanced technologies in the engineering software allows to solute different complex problems. One of the main direct of research in the composites is optimization of composite structure due to improving the relative strength and relative stiffness of the composite structure, and improving the efficiency of manufacturing processes. There are a lot of methods of optimizations but currently the topological optimization is the most conceptual and forward-looking method. The main goal of the article is to analyze and estimate the approach for designing wing rib with symmetric laminated plates with the different fiber orientation based on the topology optimization. The following tasks were solved for this: firstly, a topological optimization model was determined. This model was based on maximum stiffness with a specified volume constraint is established. The next step was optimization by the solid isotropic material with penalization (SIMP) model and sensitivity filtering technique; as a result of optimization the topological structures of wing rib with different fibre orientations were obtained. The topological structure and stiffness of the wing rib depend on the fibre orientation. Finally, the corresponding morphing analysis of wing rib with laminated plates is implemented by adopting ANSYS, which verified the anti-deforming capability of topology structure and illustrated the feasibility for designing the wing rib. The result shows that the maximum deformation of optimized structure is 1.57mm, whereas the maximum deformation of the un-optimized structure is 2.02 mm. Under the condition of the same material removals, the optimized structure can decrease by more than 20% deformations.

Derivation and Verification of Laminated Composite T-Beam Theory

“…A method was proposed to effectively reduce the bending deformation of airfoils at a high aspect ratio. Hu and Vambol [22] optimized the rib of a symmetric laminate using a topology model. The deformation of the material was successfully reduced by 20% through the optimization of different fiber orientations.…”

Determining the parameters for a 3D-printing process using the fused deposition modeling in order to manufacture an article with the required structural parameters

“…-topological optimization of geometry and structure [4,5]; -a quick transition from a model to its implementation. The issue related to fabricating a structure that should comply with certain requirements by 3D printing is similar in many aspects to the problems related to manufacturing structures from composite materials [6]:…”

A review on the topology optimization of the fiber-reinforced composite structures

“…Hu and Vambol [11] designed the composite wing rib based on the topology optimization method, and the results show that the deformation of the optimized structure can be decreased by more than 20% compared with that of the non-optimized structure under the same material removal rate. The above results showed that the fiber orientation greatly affects the structural performances and topological shape.…”