Session: 01-01-01: General Topics of Aerospace Structures

Paper Number: 139119

139119 - Announcing HyperXpert™ Design Insights for Generating Lightweight Manufacturable Designs 

One of the first steps taken in an aerospace vehicle structure design is defining the substructure arrangement. Although many disciplines and subsystems contribute to this arrangement, choosing a configuration that is near optimum from a strength and stability standpoint can be critical to the overall success of the design. Additionally, the substructure configuration is often “locked” early in a design program to facilitate subsystem design within that configuration. The result is that non-optimum arrangements can incur a high mass penalty at a later stage of the design to resolve any structural deficiencies, since substructure cannot be moved at that stage. To this end, two key areas are addressed in this work. The first is the development of an approach to perform large scale trade studies for substructure arrangement. Second, within the trade study, the type of analysis performed is consistent with classical aerospace methods used for detailed design and final analysis of aerostructures. With these capabilities, the spar and rib count and positions are evaluated simultaneously with panel concept evaluations based on optimizing cross sectional dimensions and material systems. The trade study is achieved with the HyperX software, which employs this analysis methodology across the spectrum from conceptual to detailed design. The process described above is demonstrated on an Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) wing structure by varying spar and rib spacing (and quantity) and optimizing the entire structure for each configuration.

HyperX is a tool for optimization of aerospace structures. It interfaces with a Finite Element Model (FEM) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) results to define the geometry of the structure being optimized and the loads within that structure. For analysis, HyperX employs classical aerospace methods [1] to evaluate the strength and stability of many design candidates, and can determine the optimum design details such as panel concept, flange, web, and skin thickness, composite stacking sequence and plies, etc [2] [3].

The new application being considered in this paper is the use of the HyperX optimization tools to study a large number of substructure arrangements, and track the mass and design details of each design in a cloud-based database. Large-scale design exploration is important for this stage of design because the decisions made on structural arrangement are typically carried through the remainder of the program and impact performance and manufacturing rate and cost Details such as the optimum panel concept (solid laminate/sandwich/Hat-Tee-I stiffened panel), material (thermoplastic/resin infustion/next gen thermoset) and joints (fastened/bonded) are evaluated for each candidate spar and rib structure layout. 

Presenting Author: Craig Collier Collier Aerospace

Presenting Author Biography: Craig Collier, chief executive officer and president of Collier Aerospace Corporation, founded the company (then called Collier Research) in 1995. He helps customers in aerospace, automotive and other high-end industries solve engineering analysis and design optimization challenges for projects involving composite and metal structures.

Collier is the inventor and original developer of HyperX® software, a computer-aided engineering (CAE) tool that provides stress analysis and design sizing optimization and creates stress reports for aircraft certification.

During his 38-year career, he has worked in research & development as an aerospace research structural engineer at the NASA Langley Research Center and in the commercial aerospace industry. In 2017, he led two research teams for the NASA Advanced Composite Consortium: Rapid Analysis Tools and Design for Manufacturing.

Collier has published more than 40 technical papers on composite structural analysis and sizing optimization. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering and computer science from North Carolina State University in Raleigh.