Influence of flight control laws on structural sizing of commercial aircraft

Book excerpt: The increasing demand for new civil aircraft pushes aircraft manufacturers to develop innovative solutions that lead in particular to mass reductions. One way to achieve these kinds of improvements is the use of multidisciplinary analysis and optimization. In this sense the intention of this PhD thesis is to develop a multidisciplinary framework in order to quantify the impact of load alleviation function parameter changes on structural components like the wing and fuselage in terms of resulting mass changes. The developed iterative process chain covers the loads calculation including an active load alleviation system, a structural assessment of the wing and fuselage components and a dedicated feedback loop in order to update mass and stiffness properties of the loads calculation model. The study shows that significant mass reductions are achievable while on the other hand estimated mass penalties are irrelevant.