An Approach to Tiltrotor Wing Multidisciplinary Optimization through Increased Productivity

Abstract

The paper describes one way to approach the multidisciplinary task of optimizing a tiltrotor wing structure which is equipped with an active flutter suppression system. Objective function is a productivity index, as a measure for aircraft cost-effectiveness. Short digress is held on the characteristics of the tiltrotor's dynamic system and its aeroelastic behavior. Contributing analyses (CA's) for calculating aircraft performance, modeling the dynamic system, and designing an active flutter suppression control system are selected. Multilevel and non-hierarchic decomposition techniques are discussed. A file structure for handling data transfer between the CA's and the optimizer is presented. Preliminary results are shown which highlight some peculiarities of this optimization problem.