In the development of eVTOL vehicles for Urban Air Mobility, lightweight design is of particular importance to compensate for the additional weight that is brought into the vehicle through batteries.
Throughout aircraft design, structural models are built at different system levels. Coarse representations of the full structure are used for initial sizing activities while refined models of sub-systems are built later for detailed sizing. Load data is typically generated at full vehicle level and must be accurately transferred to detailed sub-system models. It can be challenging to synchronize all models with the latest design data.
To address these challenges, we propose a unified workflow on 3DEXPERIENCE platform in this presentation that connects structural models at different system levels and enables seamless load transfer while ensuring associativity with parametric design data.
We show how a conceptual model of a full eVTOL vehicle and a detailed model of its wing are built and associated with a parametric design model in CATIA, with a detailed sizing of the wing structure driven by load data from the full vehicle model. A design exploration study for the wing structure aims to meet requirements in terms of skin buckling and the best alternative is validated through a detailed post-buckling simulation.
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