Aeronautical Light Weight Aluminium Structures Design Optimization And Testing

Analytical computation methods are still used in the aeronautic sector due to both tradition and some mistrust of the finite element method simulation. In the design of light weight Aluminium bolted structures, FEM could mean a competitive advantage towards optimized design; however computational cost of FEM can not match that of analytical based design. In order to evaluate to what extent a finite element model approaches reality, a prototype has been designed, tested and simulated. The conclusions from this comparison have been summarized as a bolted structures design simulation methodology.