EXPERIMENT AND ANALYSIS OF OPTIMIZATION DESIGN ON PLATE-RIB STRUCTURE OF AIRCRAFT

There were many theoretical studies but few experimental demonstrations in the structural topology optimization (STO) field. In order to promote the technology of STO in the aeronautical engineering, this paper proposes to use the ‘sensitive threshold'(ST) approach to obtain an ‘innovative structure' and to make test comparisons and analyses of conventional and innovative structures. From the test results, not only a good consistency can be seen as compared with the numerical calculation, but also some findings are made that the stiffness is increased (by more than 10%~30%) and the stresses are lower (less than 10%~20%) for the innovative structure. By using the concept of the ‘structural energy' and the principle of energy, a reasonable explanation of the previous phenomena is made. The comparison tests also demonstrate that the ST approach can obtain the invocative structure effectively, meanwhile, provide precious test support data as well for the application of STO.