Design of the Truss Wing Structure Based on Principal Stress Trajectory Method

The current aircraft wing structure is always too bulky due to the addition of many redundant structures for ensuring safety and reliability during flight. To improve the situation, this paper proposes a novel strategy based on the principal stress trajectory method for lightweight design of wing structure. Considering the lightweight and high stiffness characteristics of truss structures, as well as the intuitiveness of the principal stress trajectory in reflecting the stress distribution and force flow path inside the structure, it is considered to arrange the truss structure along the principal stress trajectories to enhance its overall load-bearing capacity. This approach is further adopted for the wing design of aerospace aircraft, offering a new strategy for achieving lightweight design. A multispar wing structure, which is widely adopted in engineering, is proposed to make a comparison with the truss wing structure designed based on the principal stress trajectory method in terms of their mechanics performance. The results demonstrate that the truss wing structure designed based on the principal stress trajectory method exhibits lighter weight, higher structural stiffness, and a more uniform stress distribution compared to the traditional multispar wing structure, which validates the effectiveness of the novel design strategy. This paper provides a new idea for the lightweight design of wings for future aerospace planes.