Cranfield University MSc research summary by Feng Huang
Altair Employee
Optimisation plays an important role in the structural design. It is well known that the weight of structures will affect the manufacturing cost, the functional performance and the consumption of the energy. However the optimisation is not only a matter of weight; it can be used to optimise any type of objectives. In engineering practise, it is also common to minimise functional figures such as the stress and the fatigue of a structure. Besides, the structural design in the modern commercial aircraft inevitably involves considerations such as aerodynamics performance and system requirements. Even for airframe design itself, there are many interfaces which require compromise and coordination. So the optimisation of structural design usually has various disciplines to be taken account of. Hence, the single objective, multi-objective and multi-disciplinary optimisation problems are very important in engineering practise and will be analysed in this research. Feng Huang is a MSC student from Cranfield University. His research topic is to find a framework to guide inexperienced engineers to find a proper approach to solve the optimisation problem. In his research, Hyperworks are used for the topology, shape and sizing optimisation problems. It is also recommended for the engineers of entry level to learn Hyperworks to carry out the FEA and optimisation. 
0