The aerospace sector increasingly demands efficient structural analysis methodologies to design lightweight, cost-effective, and sustainable aircraft while reducing development time. Although traditional global Finite Element Methods (FEMs) strike a balance between accuracy and numerical efficiency, their computational cost remains prohibitive, if large-scale optimisation tasks are required to design and size novel configurations, limiting their applicability in the early stages of design. This paper introduces a novel framework integrating Carrera’s Unified Formulation (CUF) with gradient-based optimisation techniques to enable precise and computationally efficient structural designs for aerospace applications. By augmenting beam element-based Finite Element Methods (FEM) with CUF, the suggested methodology provides adaptable prediction accuracy while achieving substantial reductions in computational cost, compared to conventional global FEM approaches. The adjoint method, implemented through Automatic Differentiation (AD) in reverse mode, enables exact gradient computation, addressing the challenges of high-dimensional optimisation problems. Results demonstrate that CUF provides a robust alternative to conventional shell-based modelling, particularly for preliminary design phases, achieving comparable stress predictions while reducing computational time by up to 97%. This capability accelerates the development of more efficient and sustainable aircraft designs.
Application of CUF for the Structural Optimization of Wings / Cardone, D.; Cavallaro, R.; Cini, A.; Petrolo, M.; Zappino, E.. - ELETTRONICO. - (2025). (Intervento presentato al convegno AIAA Scitech 2025 Forum tenutosi a Orlando, FL, USA nel 6-10 January 2025) [10.2514/6.2025-1745].
Application of CUF for the Structural Optimization of Wings
D. Cardone;M. Petrolo;E. Zappino
2025
Abstract
The aerospace sector increasingly demands efficient structural analysis methodologies to design lightweight, cost-effective, and sustainable aircraft while reducing development time. Although traditional global Finite Element Methods (FEMs) strike a balance between accuracy and numerical efficiency, their computational cost remains prohibitive, if large-scale optimisation tasks are required to design and size novel configurations, limiting their applicability in the early stages of design. This paper introduces a novel framework integrating Carrera’s Unified Formulation (CUF) with gradient-based optimisation techniques to enable precise and computationally efficient structural designs for aerospace applications. By augmenting beam element-based Finite Element Methods (FEM) with CUF, the suggested methodology provides adaptable prediction accuracy while achieving substantial reductions in computational cost, compared to conventional global FEM approaches. The adjoint method, implemented through Automatic Differentiation (AD) in reverse mode, enables exact gradient computation, addressing the challenges of high-dimensional optimisation problems. Results demonstrate that CUF provides a robust alternative to conventional shell-based modelling, particularly for preliminary design phases, achieving comparable stress predictions while reducing computational time by up to 97%. This capability accelerates the development of more efficient and sustainable aircraft designs.Pubblicazioni consigliate
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
https://hdl.handle.net/11583/2996329
Attenzione
Attenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo