“Having sized and optimised the primary structure in the preliminary design phase, an aircraft design project moves into the detailed design phase. For structural design engineers this involves designing ndividual components and optimising them for minimum weight and /or cost subject to manufacturing constraints. The aircraft industry aims to reduce the amount of carbon emissions produced by the industry, and reducing weight in order to save fuel is one such way of accomplishing this mission. In this task, a component belonging to a flap extension mechanism was given to optimise. The optimisation would take place using a given loading condition and constraints that are modelled to represent the loading experienced by the part in practice. The component would be milled out of a 1/4 inch thick plate of Aluminium 6082-T6 Alloy, and manufacturing constraints were provided to ensure that the component would be manufacturable after the optimisation took place. The component was designed to carry an ultimate load of 7.5 kN without a deflection of more than 5 mm.”

Autodesk Fusion 360 was used to optimise a rectangular block to the design seen on the left, weight 287.652 grams, which is a mass reduction of just over 84%.

Scroll down to see the general process of the optimisation.

Please email if you’d like a copy of the report that goes through a more detailed process and results section. This project was a part of Imperial College London - Department Of Aeronautics - YEAR 3 - Aerial Vehicle Design (AVD) - Detailed Design. Work done by Tejasva Malhotra, academic year 2019 - 2020.