Efficient wing design for sailplanes

The purpose of this research is to obtain optimized sailplane wing design, which contributes to performance in terms of range and endurance. This study presents aerostructural design optimization using Multidisciplinary Design Optimization approach (MDO). This optimization is carried out using OpenAeroStruct (OAS), an open-source low-fidelity aerostructural analysis and optimization tool written in Python and developed in NASA's OpenMDAO framework. The aerostructural model in OAS coupled a Vortex Lattice Method for aerodynamic with a 1-D Finite-Element Analysis for structure, to model the sailplane wing. An aerostructural optimization problem was formulated to minimize the Sink Speed, as the objective function, with varying twelve design variables, and subjected to two constraints. An initial simple wing design is used as baseline for the optimization. The findings of the aerostructural optimization indicated that the optimized wing exhibited improvements in both disciplines, resulting a better performance for the sailplane in terms of range and endurance. The optimized wing achieved increase of 37% in endurance and 27% in range.