SE 143A&B Aerospace Structural Design I & II

An initial design is developed through a series of trade-off studies; students must weigh aerodynamic efficiency, structural performance, weight, and manufacturability.

Students test their design concepts and practice manufacturing techniques on small sections of a wing mold to understand and address key challenges.  They are able to structurally test critical parts to validate their models while developing confidence in manufacturing the final assembled part.

Students use sophisticated graphical and analysis programs to model the distributed aerodynamic loading on their wings.  They are tasked with a making a variety of predictions to develop their wing design, such as laminate failure, skin buckling, bolted and bonded connection stresses, large bending and torsion deformation, and natural vibration frequencies. 

Primary software used in this course:

Matlab | Abaqus | Solidworks

A large portion of the capstone project experience is manufacturing and assembling the final wing.  These wings are between 6 and 9 feet in length and require many hours of detailed composite lay-up, bonded assembly, trimming, and other manufacturing steps needed to achieve a high quality completed structure. 

Structural testing is the key phase of the project, where the student's final wings are finally put to the test.  The wings are fastened to the strong wall within the High Bay Aerospace Laboratory and connected to a series of testing components and data acquisition system.  Strain gauges are placed in key locations on the wing, and displacement potentiometers and load cells are used to collect critical engineering data.  The wings undergo a vibration test and then ultimately loaded quasi-statically until failure. 

A critical aspect of the course is evaluating the accuracy of structural behavior predictions, namely stiffness, strength, and failure modes.  After large scale testing, students investigate their wings for structural damages and assess how these failure points led to the data and results collected.  Some of the common failure modes include bearing failure, spar bending failure, bonded joint failure, and delamination.  These findings are correlated back to their analysis and manufacturing techniques to draw meaningful engineering conclusions.