Simulation-Driven Failsafe Design

A recording of the presentation made at the NAFEMS Americas Seminar "Engineering Analysis & Simulation in the Aerospace Industry - Emerging Standards & Practices" that was held in Montreal on the 4th of October 2016.

Aerospace manufacturers and suppliers are facing an increasingly challenging and competitive marketplace. The current industry demands that engineers design safe and reliable aircraft, meet increasingly stringent fuel-economy standards, and invent cost-effective approaches to the use of cutting-edge materials. Utilizing the latest simulation tools with accuracy and efficiency has never been more critical, as aerospace engineering continues to move into highly-advanced technological space.

Abstract

The great advancements in the field of numerical analysis enable engineers to solve complex problems using finite element analysis. These advancements aid in the investigation of responses of physical problems to their environment. Using these tools, the engineering communities would like to depend more extensively on analytical approaches to investigate the subjects of their studies, where testing was traditionally used for that purpose. However, the reliability of these solutions is always a major concern. Certain regulatory requirements allow analytical approaches to be used for compliance purposes as an option to testing. In all cases these regulations require validation of the analysis before the results can be accepted. The current presentation identifies the federal aviation regulations that allow analysis as a means of compliance for the structural problems and provides acceptable means of validation of this analysis. This paper provides a brief introduction to finite element analysis as an analytical tool with steps and recommendations for building a compliant numerical model.