Kevin McHugh, Cate Leszcz, Joshua Deaton
DOI Number: N/A
Conference number: IFASD-2024-002
This work investigates a new method to design aircraft skin panels to minimize weight while providing sufficient strength to withstand both buckling due to aerodynamic heating and flutter due to dynamic pressure over the panel. In this work, mass minimization is done via an optimization of panel thickness distribution as opposed to fill-void techniques or methods of adding discrete stiffeners found in the literature or in practice. The thickness distribution and therefore optimization problem is further reduced in numerical order by utilizing a Galerkin projection of global thickness basis functions. The developed tool results in a 6-17% reduction in weight for an optimized panel for thermal buckling stability when compared to the optimally thin flat panel.