VARIABIE-COMPLEXITY RESPONSE-SURFACE APPROXIMATIONS FOR WING STRUCTURAL WEIGHT IN HSCT DESIGN

A procedure for generating and using a polynomial approximation to win g bending material weight of a High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) is pr esented, Response surface methodology is used to lit a quadratic polyn omial to data gathered from a series of structural optimizations. Seve ral techniques are employed in order to minimize the number of require d structural optimizations and to maintain accuracy. First, another we ight function based on statistical data is used to identify a suitable model function for the response surface. In a similar manner, geometr ic and loading parameters that are likely to appear in the response su rface model are also identified. Next, simple analysis techniques are used to find regions of the design space where reasonable HSCT designs could occur. The use of intervening variables along with analysis of variance reduce the number of polynomial terms in the response surface model function, Structural optimization is then performed by the prog ram GENESIS on a 28-node Intel Paragon. Finally, optimizations of the HSCT are completed both with and without the response surface.