A Post-Processing Automation Tool for Finite Element Analysis on Airplane Fuselage

Abstract

The work in this project revolves around investigating how automation can be used to improve the post-processing efficiency and quality when analyzing and sizing an airplane structure. The project is carried out at Heart Aerospace, based in Gothenburg, Sweden who is currently working on the design of an electric 30-seater regional aircraft for short travel called the ES-30, whose main engines are powered by batteries. A program called ”H-ADAPT” (Heart Aerospace Design Analysis & Post-processing Tool), which serves as a tool with a graphical user interface, was created and used to perform the necessary analytical strength and stability analysis for the stringers and skins of the airplane fuselage. The program imports the large data files generated in the finite element analysis and summarize the different load cases, checks margin of safety and suggests optimized geometries for the elements. The user can edit the geometrical and material parameters of the elements, save and load the progress, as well as export the results to an Excel table for documentation. Validation of the analytical solutions is performed through hand-calculations, as well as comparison against a finite element analysis, for certain elements. Unfortunately, the global finite element model lacked some geometrical information, and the user must manually give this input to the program for every element. This disrupts the automation and is time-consuming, which was one of the main purposes of the program to optimize. However, in the future if the geometrical information has been added, the program provides useful analysis and an easy-to-use graphical user interface to help with the sizing of the elements. It was also created in such a way that more complex analysis can be added, as well as more parts of the airplane.