Aircraft Target Load Envelope

What is it about?

The evaluation and selection of the design loads is a critical step in the design process of aircraft. If the loads are initially overestimated, the aircraft will suffer a weight penalty, unless a late redesign is performed when a better estimate of the loads is made available. If the loads are underestimated, a redesign is required to bring the structural strength within compliance. In both cases, high cost and program delays can occur due to the inability to consider the epistemic uncertainty in the selection of the design loads. This paper presents a novel methodology to directly create approximate models of the convex load envelopes to visualize the effect of the uncertain parameters. The variation of the load envelope shape is captured through a change in radius in the polar coordinate system before Principal Component Analysis is used reduce the dimensionality. The method can be used for both maneuver (steady) and time-dependent loads. Normalized data from both types of loads for a conventional twin-aisle aircraft is used to demonstrate the efficiency of this non-intrusive technique, which can be seen as an extension of the widely-used deterministic load envelope approach.

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Why is it important?

Construction of 2-D or 3-D critical load envelope.