During early phases of wing design, analytic and low-fidelity methods are often used to identify promising design concepts. In many cases, solutions obtained using these methods provide intuition about the design space that is not easily obtained using higher-fidelity methods. This is especially true for aerostructural design. However, many analytic and low-fidelity aerostructural solutions are limited in application to wings with specific planforms and weight distributions. Here, a numerical method for minimising induced drag with structural constraints is presented that uses approximations that apply to unswept planar wings with arbitrary planforms and weight distributions. The method is applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ikhana airframe to show how it can be used for rapid aerostructural optimisation and design-space exploration. The design space around the optimum solution is visualised, and the sensitivity of the optimum solution to changes in weight distribution, structural properties, wing loading and taper ratio is shown. The optimum lift distribution and wing-structure weight for the Ikhana airframe are shown to be in good agreement with analytic solutions. Whereas most modern high-fidelity solvers obtain solutions in a matter of hours, all of the solutions shown here can be obtained in a matter of seconds.

中文翻译：

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平面机翼快速结构优化和设计空间探索的低保真方法

在机翼设计的早期阶段，分析和低保真方法通常用于确定有前景的设计概念。在许多情况下，使用这些方法获得的解决方案提供了关于设计空间的直觉，而使用高保真方法则不容易获得。对于航空结构设计尤其如此。然而，许多分析和低保真航空结构解决方案仅限于应用于具有特定平面形状和重量分布的机翼。在这里，提出了一种在结构约束下最小化诱导阻力的数值方法，该方法使用适用于具有任意平面形状和重量分布的未后掠平面机翼的近似值。该方法应用于美国国家航空航天局 (NASA) Ikhana 机身，展示了它如何用于快速航空结构优化和设计空间探索。围绕最佳解决方案的设计空间被可视化，并显示了最佳解决方案对重量分布、结构特性、机翼载荷和锥度比变化的敏感性。Ikhana 机身的最佳升力分布和机翼结构重量与解析解非常吻合。大多数现代高保真求解器在几小时内即可获得解决方案，而此处显示的所有解决方案都可以在几秒钟内获得。显示了结构特性、机翼载荷和锥度比。Ikhana 机身的最佳升力分布和机翼结构重量与解析解非常吻合。大多数现代高保真求解器在几小时内即可获得解决方案，而此处显示的所有解决方案都可以在几秒钟内获得。显示了结构特性、机翼载荷和锥度比。Ikhana 机身的最佳升力分布和机翼结构重量与解析解非常吻合。大多数现代高保真求解器在几小时内即可获得解决方案，而此处显示的所有解决方案都可以在几秒钟内获得。