Equivalent Plate Method Based Structure Weight Estimation Of Wings

Minimizing structural weight is an important rule throughout the whole aircraft design process,which deciding the success or failure of the design to a great extent,especially in the conceptual design of wings,and the initial sizes of the design have an important influence on the final flight performance and quality characteristics of the aircraft.It is a major project for designers to estimate the aircraft weight in an acceptable way.The Equivalent Plate Method(EPM)is used to estimate the wings’ weight in aircraft conceptual design in this paper.The EPM based on the First-order Shear Deformation Plate Theory is realized through MATLAB&C hybrid programming technology.In this method,the displacement of the model is obtained by assuming the displacement function as a simple polynomial,and the Ritz model is used to obtain the solution,then the static and dynamic analysis of the model can be presented.While suited for new configuration and new material,the EPM has the advantages of rapid computing rapid and high accuracy.So the EPM is uniquely suited to fill the gap between empirical weight equations and Finite Element Method in the analysis and design of aerospace structure.The main content of this paper is as follows:1)A Wing modeling method is developed through the parameterization of the main component of the wing using the first-order shear deformation plate theory based EPM.This method is realized by MATLAB mixed with C language programming technology.2)While guaranteeing the computational accuracy,the computation efficiency of the EPM program is improved by the assumption that the spar and rib webs only provide transverse shear stiffness to the wing.3)A general wing platform EPM is developed for complex configurations such as C-wing,joined-wing.4)The influence of different order number of Ritz basis functions to computational accuracy is discussed.And the proposal of Ritz basis function selection is presented.5)The wing structure weight estimation and optimization process is established in the iSight software process,based on EPM program of this paper.Finally the wing’s minimum structure weight is obtained through the stiffness and strength constrains.