Topology Optimisation: Increasing the Speed and Reliability of Design

In this paper, topology optimisation is applied to the design of the rear fuselage of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). A comparison is drawn between the performance of a design created through evolutionary structural optimisation (ESO) and a baseline design modelled on a manually designed and successfully flow fuselage geometry, for different wing shapes. The loading for each wing shape is determined by full-potential (FP) aerodynamic analysis. A Kriging model is then employed in a multidisciplinary optimisation procedure driving a trade study between aerodynamic efficiency and aircraft structural weight. Using this procedure, a Pareto front is populated to give a set of optimal designs which satisfy maximum aerodynamic efficiency and minimum weight objectives. A wide search of the design space is achieved with little manual intervention, which makes use of the high fidelity weight estimate extracted from topology optimization results.