On the application of CFD and MDO to aircraft wingboxes using commercial software

When designing for aircraft structures, it is common to begin with a previous design, and adapt it to new applications. Using multidisciplinary design optimization, refinement can be automatically performed on initial designs using high-fidelity tools. In this paper, multidisciplinary design optimization is applied to the design of an aircraft wingbox using four design variables. The Bruguet range equation was chosen to be the objective function due to its consideration of lift, drag, and weight of the aircraft. Industry standard software such as ANSYS and MATLAB are used for analysis and optimization. Using the operating conditions of the Boeing 747-400 as a basis, the design parameters were compared to the initial design and showed variations below 15%.