Damage Tolerant Design for the Tilt Rotor UAV

틸트 로터형 무인항공기의 손상허용 설계

The Damage Tolerant Design is developed to help alleviate structural failure and cracking problems in aerospace structures. Recently, the Damage Tolerant Design is required and recommended for most of aircraft design. In this paper, the damage tolerant design is applied to tilt rotor UAV. First of all, the fatigue load spectrum for the tilt rotor UAV is developed and fatigue analysis is performed for the flaperon joint which has FCL (fatigue critical location). Tilt rotor UAV has two modes: helicopter mode when UAV is taking off and landing; fixed wing mode when the tilt rotor UAV is cruising. To make fatigue load spectrum, FELIX is used for helicopter mode. TWIST is used for fixed wing mode. Fatigue analysis of flaperon joint is performed using fatigue load spectrum. E-N curve approach is used for picking crack initiation point. The LEFM(Linear Elastic Fracture Method) is considered for analyzing crack growth or propagation. Finally, including the crack initiation and propagation, the fatigue life is evaluated. Therefore the Damage Tolerant Design can be done.