Effect of Ribs and Stringer Spacings on the Weight of Aircraft Structure for Aluminum Material

Low cost and less weight are the two primary objectives of any aircraft structure. Efficient design of aircraft components is therefore, required to reduce cost and weight of the aircraft structure. For components with compressive loading, Ribs and stringer spacings and stringer cross-section play a major role in achieving less weight. The main objective of the present study was aimed at establishing optimum stringer and ribs spacings and stringer cross-section for minimum weight of buckling design driven components using FEM packages. The analysis of effect of plate with ribs and stringer spacing was modeled in FEM to study the effect of these on the weight of aircraft structure using aluminum as material. The analysis was carried out through linear buckling analysis of the model. The software tools used were HyperMesh as a pre and post processor and Radioss as a solver.