Investigation and analysis of Novel Aircraft Designs and the effects introduced on the modelling and characterisation of Fatigue Load Spectra

This summary gives a brief description of the research that will be undertaken on the PhD project titled, "Investigation and analysis of Novel Aircraft Designs and the effects introduced on the modelling and characterisation of Fatigue Load Spectra." at Queen's University of Belfast. This research is funded through an EPSRC iCASE award and will be conducted in collaboration with Rolls-Royce plc.
The aim of the proposed research is to understand and characterise load spectra and to investigate the parameterization and customization of the load spectra generation process for various aircraft configurations and sizing.
Research will delve into the analysis of the sensitivity of the Loads Spectra as an output based on changes in Aircraft characteristics such as dimensions, weight, flight envelop, missions and external parameters such as gusts, and so forth.
One of the foreseen outputs of this research is the development of efficient and accurate numerical models which will facilitate the characterisation of Load Spectra for customised aircraft configuration in order to be used for Fatigue Analysis. This will facilitate an improved estimation of the lifespan of the aircraft during the design phase and hence have a direct influence on the life-cycle cost of aviation products.
The key objectives include:
Performing a review of methodologies for developing fatigue Spectra.
Determining how the spectra are influenced by dimensions, weight, flight envelop, missions profile and external parameters such as gust to understand the driving parameters.
Developing efficient and accurate numerical models for the characterisation of Load Spectra for customised aircraft configuration.
Creating a framework to calculate the impact of these spectra on an aircraft to further understand the influence of the spectra on aircraft fatigue related behaviour.