On the Structural Design Synthesis of Certifiable Aircraft Engine Pylons

Abstract

The application of an integrated model based process to the design of the structure of an engine pylon at a level of detail and thoroughness that would meet certification requirements leads to significant time and cost savings as well as resulting structure with high strength to weight ratio. Numerous technological hurdles to rapidly generate design synthesis pylon models have been cleared. Newly created modular automation platform (MAP) paves the path, implementing the multi-level sizing process, to model based design synthesis process for pylon certification driven by gradient based optimization algorithm. The integrated model based process introduced in this work can be further extended to the entire aircraft, allowing for dramatic reductions in non-recurring costs, development times, and operational cost