Lightening the load for aerospace design

Citation

(2002), "Lightening the load for aerospace design", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 74 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2002.12774cab.001

Lightening the load for aerospace design

Keywords: Aircraft, Design

When it comes to designing aircraft lighting components, the Lighting Systems Division of BFGoodrich Aerospace, located in Oldsmar, Florida, USA, utilises DesignSpace to optimise their designs for structural integrity. "Overall DesignSpace is helping our business by reducing our design cycle time, as well as reducing our up-front testing costs through it's ease of use," said Anish V. Patet senior mechanical engineer with the Lighting Systems Division.

Anish and his group are responsible for the design and fabrication of interior and exterior lighting products for the aircraft industry. Providing the lightest, strongest, and highest quality components gives BFGoodrich a competitive advantage in the aerospace industry. The Lighting Systems Division relies on DesignSpace to help them keep this advantage and stay ahead of the competition.

Prior to using DesignSpace, the Lighting Systems Division did not utilise analytical software for mechanical design performance. The company would perform their up-front design analysis using paper and pencil with theoretical, or closed form solutions out of engineering texts such as Roark & Young, stereo lithography, and the fabrication of physical prototypes.

Anish knew that mechanical simulation tools could help his group and evaluated several FEA packages. "We chose DesignSpace from ANSYS, Inc. because of its ease-of-use and associative with the divisions CAD system. We thoroughly evaluated several other products, but felt DesignSpace was the best product for helping us easily analyse our mechanical components for stress and vibration issues early in our design process."

"Time consumption and costs inherent in building prototypes are significant. DesignSpace gives us greater confidence in our designs so we don't have to do extensive and expensive reliability testing. We can shorten the testing cycles with confidence knowing we've performed some analytical processing before a part is cut. pace has reduced our design and development cycle by 25 per cent. We are seeing a definite decrease in design and development costs. The software has produced schedule and material savings as well as a reduction in prototyping on the components themselves," said Anish.

The Lighting Systems Division has used DesignSpace on multiple projects for the design and simulation of exterior lights, housings, mounting hardware, brackets, and mechanical components. The first project they used DesignSpace on was an aircraft light housing. The project was to design the housing to weight and accommodate the extensive vibration loading seen in a particular mounting location. "DesignSpace helped us reduce the component weight by over 40 per cent, and gave us confidence that the part was structurally sound. Weight reduction is important for aircraft component design because lighter parts save our customers on fuel costs." For engineering analysis of the light housing, Anish performed three mechanical simulations using DesignSpace. Each study gave him greater confidence as he optimised the housing. "I even ran a couple of far-fetched simulations playing around with creative ideas and having fun with DesignSpace. You can sit back and design on the fly; it's really nice. Before Designspace, we would over-design components, which added cost to the part," he said.

It was explained to our reporter that the Lighting Systems Division liked the features and capabilities of DesignSpace, especially the user interface, because it's easy to adapt to and understand. They also liked DesignSpace's ability to integrate stress, vibration, and thermal simulations in the DesignSpace Explorer environment, as well as its CAD associativity and ability to save various models for quick answer updating.

"There was an analytical void for a long time. My company's management is happy with our purchase decision They've only heard good things about DesignSpace. I'm glad we invested in DesignSpace. You can quickly develop a concept, try a 'what-if' or quick evaluation, and know if you're in the ballpark or if you need to punt and start again. I'm absolutely planning on using DesignSpace on future projects. We've already started to apply it to printed circuit (PC) boards to test for vibration failure or excessive deflection caused by vibration to keep from harming electronics mounted to the PC boards."

Details available from: ANSYS Inc, Tel: +1 724.746.3304; Fax: +1 724.514.9494.