how to handle trade-off between wing stiffness and rib loads

What is it about?

In a strongly bent wing, the ribs experience a high compressive load. The ribs have to be able to withstand this load. While designing a wing, a trade-off must be done between stiff wing with low rib loads and a flexible wing with high rib loads. We show how this trade-off can be modeled efficiently in a 2-level weight optimization exercise. We propose to apply 'principal component analysis' to analyze and reduce the amount of interaction between both levels.

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Why is it important?

The application of all-composite designs for slender wing structures results in very flexible designs.