The Air Staff has determined the B-52 wing must be redesigned to better support additional structural demands. The engineering design project was conducted to construct a new wing beam design for the B-52 bomber and to compose an analysis of the new main wing spar. Given the information and the requirements that must be met with this design, our team went through the steps of the design process to come up with 3 concept variants. Of the 3 variants, we recommend to the Air Staff that the beam is to be made out of Steel SAE 4340 and configured into the T-beam shape in order to optimize each requirement for the wing beam design. The dimensions we found to optimize this design includes a length of 1257 inches, width of 26.01 inches, height of 34
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After some iterations of trying to optimize the requirements to our customer’s needs, we weren’t satisfied with the results because the fatigue life was 8.8 million hours, a very unrealistic number. Our next decision was to go to the T-beam shape, because the rectangular shape would have been way too heavy at minimum lengths and widths. The T-beam shape is also cheaper, because it requires less material. After optimizing these requirements, we had found our first viable concept. Out of curiosity, we wanted to see which combinations of shape and material would maximize or minimize each single requirement. By going through all the materials and shapes combinations, we found 6 viable concepts, as can be seen in Table 5. They all met the requirements. From what we came up with we immediately threw out the rectangular beam design made of Aluminum, 6061-T6. As predicted, it had the highest factor of safety, and the lowest fatigue life. We threw out the design made of Aluminum 2024-T4 in a T-shape. The price of this design was the highest at $382,482. It also was the second heaviest and the second lowest in the amount of flight hours. We also threw out Stainless Steel 17-4PH, T-beam shape because it had the highest deflection, even though it weighed the least. We started with 6 concept designs, and eliminated three of them having very little number of iterations needed to come up with three designs. At this point we needed a decision matrix and our customer needs to help make the call of which was the best design of the remaining 3 concept
After some iterations of trying to optimize the requirements to our customer’s needs, we weren’t satisfied with the results because the fatigue life was 8.8 million hours, a very unrealistic number. Our next decision was to go to the T-beam shape, because the rectangular shape would have been way too heavy at minimum lengths and widths. The T-beam shape is also cheaper, because it requires less material. After optimizing these requirements, we had found our first viable concept. Out of curiosity, we wanted to see which combinations of shape and material would maximize or minimize each single requirement. By going through all the materials and shapes combinations, we found 6 viable concepts, as can be seen in Table 5. They all met the requirements. From what we came up with we immediately threw out the rectangular beam design made of Aluminum, 6061-T6. As predicted, it had the highest factor of safety, and the lowest fatigue life. We threw out the design made of Aluminum 2024-T4 in a T-shape. The price of this design was the highest at $382,482. It also was the second heaviest and the second lowest in the amount of flight hours. We also threw out Stainless Steel 17-4PH, T-beam shape because it had the highest deflection, even though it weighed the least. We started with 6 concept designs, and eliminated three of them having very little number of iterations needed to come up with three designs. At this point we needed a decision matrix and our customer needs to help make the call of which was the best design of the remaining 3 concept