Design and Analysis of a Smart Composite Wing

This paper focuses on the design and analysis of a general aviation airplane wing which is fabricated of fiber reinforced composite laminates. The use of composite materials in commercial transport has continued to increase over the past 30 years. Composites materials are intended to be used more extensively as an alternative to aluminum structure in aircraft and aerospace applications. This is due to their attractive properties such as high strength-to-weight ratio and flexibility. The design of a general aviation aircraft is initially implemented in the first section. Using fiber-reinforced composite materials, an initial design of the wing box is assumed for the preliminary layout. The load carrying members of the wing are modeled as a rectangular box beam with taper while excluding the sweep angle. Aerodynamic analysis is conducted in order to extract the aerodynamic loads applied on the wing. These loads (lift, drag) are applied to the wing structure in order to conduct the proper stress analysis to attain the static structural behavior of the wing. An iterative procedure based on applying the stress analysis results to the appropriate macromechanical failure of composite materials (such as Tsai-Hill) is incorporated in order to evaluate the structural integrity of the wing against the applied loads. Moreover, static shape control of the composite wing is also considered using surface mounted and embedded piezoelectric actuators distributed along the wing span which have the capability to sense and take corrective actions under undesirable stimuli. The sequence of actuation of piezoelectric actuators embedded between the composite plies controls the elastic deformation response to loading of the composite wing. The analysis is conducted using the commercial finite element software Abaqus for several different types of piezoelectric actuators such as Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) and other piezoelectric fiber composites such as Active Fiber Composite (AFC) and Microfiber Composite (MFC). Finally, cost analysis of composite wings is briefly discussed.