Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Structural analysis of an aircraft is an essential part in determining an aircraft’s safety and therefore must be done before any given aircraft could pass the certification required by regulatory authorities. One of the ways that said analysis could be done is by employing the finite element method (FEM), which is a numerical technique that is used extensively in engineering applications for complex problems including structural analysis and optimization of an aircraft model. The first step to do so would be the initial modelling process which is crucial in determining the accuracy, efficiency, and success of the simulation as a whole. During this process, simplifications of the model could be done in order to increase computational efficiency while maintaining sufficient accuracy of the results as long as the calculations of the simplifications are done properly. This research aims to document the development process of a 19-passenger amphibious aircrafts’ forward fuselage structure using FEM with Abaqus/CAE software while highlighting the considerations made in the simplification process as well as aspects of the modelling that could still be improved upon. As a result, it is found that simplification strategies such as midsurfacing and removing unnecessary entities help in reducing the amount of total elements in the model, thus increasing computing efficiency. However, mesh refinements and convergence tests still need to be done to further validate and optimize the model.