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Transport Aircraft Airframe
Full-airframe aeroelastic modal analysis and 2.5g pull-up maneuver stress verification with wing-to-fuselage load transfer.
A regional transport aircraft airframe with 34 m wingspan undergoes combined aerodynamic lift, pylon-mounted engine thrust, and fuel inertial loads during a 2.5g pull-up maneuver. Engineers need to verify that wing bending and torsional compliance integrate smoothly with fuselage ring frame deformation without premature local panel buckling or flutter vulnerability. WebCAE computes full-system free-free vibration modes and symmetric maneuver stresses across 130k+ degrees of freedom.
1. Geometry & FEA Mesh
- •Fuselage length 36.0 m, diameter 3.6 m, 2 mm aluminum skin (E = 72 GPa, ν = 0.33), 48 stringers, ring frames spaced at 0.6 m, and 3 mm reinforced floor.
- •Wing semi-span 17.0 m with 26° leading edge sweep, 0.3 taper, NACA-4 profile with 2% camber, front/rear spars at 27%/66% chord, and 22 internal ribs.
- •Integrated center wing box transferring wing spar bending moments directly through heavy fuselage frames using rigid link member couplers (rho=1).
- •151 shell patches, 23,203 MITC4 quads, 18,093 frame members, and 329 lumped masses (fuel 5.6 t, engines 3.6 t, cabin payload 8.5 t; total mass 26,878 kg).
2. Loads & Boundary Conditions
- •Aerodynamic lift: elliptical spanwise distribution integrated across lower wing patches, balanced by horizontal engine thrust and stabilizer trim load.
- •Inertial relief: 2.5g vertical acceleration coupled with lumped fuel and engine point masses, supported on soft 3-2-1 isostatic cabin floor reference points.
- •Free-free boundary configuration with automated spectral projection separating the 6 rigid-body aircraft motions from elastic vibration shapes.
3. Simulation Results & Findings
- ✓First elastic vibration modes: symmetric wing vertical bending f₁ = 1.902 Hz, antisymmetric wing bending f₂ = 3.036 Hz, and coupled wing bending-torsion f₃ = 3.147 Hz.
- ✓Wing elastic tip deflection under 2.5g maneuver reaches 1,118.5 mm (within 2.07% of thin-walled analytical beam benchmark after root joint compliance deduction).
- ✓Fuselage vertical bending mode coupled with wing flexibility extracted cleanly at f₁₁ = 4.087 Hz.
Aviation design offices utilize WebCAE to conduct preliminary aeroelastic scoping, modal separation audits, and maneuver limit-load checks prior to building full-scale Nastran models. The entire aircraft assembly opens in browser tabs within seconds via .caeweb files, letting certification and stress teams review flutter margins without workstations.
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- ✓Nonlinear Contact & Buckling (Kσ, MITC4, RBE2/RBE3)
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