Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Global air passenger volumes continue to rise substantially each year, driven by increasing globalization of society and the continued development of many emerging countries who are showing the largest increases in air traffic. To keep commercial air travel environmentally sustainable, many new technologies need to be incorporated in order to adequately improve the efficiency of each aircraft, so that improvements in efficiency can offset the planned increases in demand. Due to the recursive relationship between aircraft weight and fuel requirements, weight reduction promises to be amongst the most straightforward methods of achieving these critical efficiency improvements.The proposed work outlines three primary research tasks, which will help to reduce weight in the next generation of commercial aircraft: multi-disciplinary topology optimization, analysis and optimization for additive manufacturing of metal components, and design under the uncertainties associated with additive manufacturing. All three tasks seek to build upon existing technologies, but require substantial improvement before they can be applied effectively to problems in the aerospace industry. The primary objective of this research is develop advanced multi-physics modeling and design optimization methodologies to remove the barrier to entry in each of these three fields. Through partnership between researchers at Queen's University and leading industry experts and facilities at Pratt & Whitney Canada, the project will focus heavily on theoretical advancements that are highly applicable to the aerospace industry in particular.