AN APPLICATION OF GRADIENT VARIABLE-THRESHOLD TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION IN AIRCRAFT STRENGTHENING FRAME DESIGN

In order to reduce the weight of aircraft structures effectively, the skeleton of aircraft is treated in the conceptual designof strengthening frame. By analyzing the concept of`gradient threshold' and pointing out its weakness, the author proposes theconcept of `modified gradient threshold' and combines it with the strategyof `constraint compensation' to form a new kind of topology optimizationalgorithm for structural layout of a strengthening frame. The topologyoptimization results of several examples show that their layouts aregood. We can see that, using the combination of CAD/CAE and topologyoptimization for aircraft strengthening frame conceptual design is feasibleand that the proposed `modified gradient threshold' topologyoptimization algorithm is effective.