Journal of Engineering Science and Technology

Vol. 7, No. 3 (2012) 322 - 338

© School of Engineering, Taylor’s University

DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE

FOR STRESS ANALYSIS OF AN AIRCRAFT WING

J. S. MOHAMED ALI*, TAZKERA SADEQ

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kulliyah of Engineering, International Islamic

University Malaysia (IIUM), P.O. Box No. 10, 50728, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
*Corresponding Author: [email protected]

Abstract
A stress analysis software based on MATLAB, Graphic user interface (GUI)
has been developed. The developed software can be used to estimate load on a
wing and to compute the stresses at any point along the span of the wing of a
given aircraft. The generalized formulation allows performing stress analysis
even for a multispar (multicell) wing. The software is expected to be a useful
tool for effective teaching learning process of courses on aircraft structures and
aircraft structural design.
Keywords: Education, Software, Stress analysis, Aircraft wings, MATLAB.

1. Introduction
It’s a well known fact that computers have brought in a great revolution in the
field of engineering education with the basic power point presentations in the
class room lectures to the advanced educational softwares. Educational softwares
and educational games have contributed to a great level in the teaching learning
process; the otherwise difficult concepts for students to understand were made
easy by these tools.
The importance and role of educational software in engineering education is
well brought out by Timothy [1] in his work on MDSolids: an educational
software for Mechanics of Materials. He pointed out that, out of six levels of the
Blooms taxonomy given by Benjamin S. Bloom [2] namely: knowledge,
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation; the students learn
the first three levels from the classroom lectures, but to acquire the other three
higher levels, students need to either carryout a project or long assignments. As
both the lecturers and students don’t find time for these projects/long assignments

322
Development of Educational Software for Stress Analysis of an Aircraft Wing 323

Nomenclatures

AR Area of the Rth cell, m2

B Boom area, m2
b Wing span, m
c Wing chord, m
f Safety factor
G Modulus of rigidity, N/m2
GUI Graphical User Interface
Iij Moment of inertia along i, j axes, m4
MS Margin of safety
Mx, My Bending moments along x and y axes respectively, Nm
N Number of cells
nop Operational load factor
P Concentrated load, N
pexc Distributed excessive load, N/m
q Shear flow, N/m
S Wing Area, m2
S x, S y Shear forces along x and y axes respectively, N
t Thickness of the web/skin, m
T Torque, Nm
W Aircraft weight, N
Ww Wing structural weight, N

Greek Symbols
δij Length of the web ij divided by its thickness
θ Twist of cell, rad
σ Bending stresses, N/m2
τ Shear stresses, N/m2
for each course, the students are not able to gain the expected outcomes of the
course. It is here that educational software comes for help, which is a self study
package, with students learning on their own without taking away the time of
lecturer. The students can repeat and research with variety of problems in a short
time and gain confidence in the subject thus achieving the outcomes of the course,
further, the lecturers can use this software for framing short term projects.

Apart from the MDSolids [1]: an educational software for mechanics of

materials, numerous other educational softwares useful for engineering students
have been reported in the literature such as Rodriguez, et al. [3] and Zigic and
Lemckert [4] for to teach telecommunication engineering and water quality
modeling respectively. Software similar to MDSolids, is present for lower level
subjects such as mechanics of materials [5, 6], statics and dynamics, where as for
advanced level subjects such as machine design, aircraft structures, etc. where
really one needs a software, it is just left with home assignments. Moreover the
students of advanced courses such as aircraft structures finds it very difficult to
understand the concept of advanced mechanics of materials topics such as
unsymmetric bending, shear centre and shear of open and closed unsymmetrical
section. Hence an educational software associated with such advanced courses

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324 J. S. Mohamed Ali and Tazkera Sadeq

will be very useful to the students and it will act as a complementary tool to
traditional teaching and learning methods.

Moreover students solving problems on independent chapters of bending, shear

and torsion could not visualize and relate its application on the analysis and design
of aircraft structures. A comprehensive short term project based on a available
software given to the students starting from the load estimation until the final
estimation of stresses on an aircraft wing will make them crystal clear about the
application of these advanced topics in analysis and design of aircraft structures.

To bring in all the important concepts taught in the aircraft structures course
namely: unsymmetric bending, shear centre and shear of open and closed
unsymmetrical section; a multi spar wing has been chosen for analysis so that one
can analyse multicell problems which is considered to be the most difficult
problems among students. These multispar wings will produce chordwise multi-cell
airfoil sections and as the number of cells increases, it becomes more and more
difficult to conduct stress analysis manually. Therefore, this work aims to develop a
software that can conveniently compute stresses at any section along the span of a
multi-spar wing. The program will be made general so that it may be applied to
various types of aircraft with a variable combination of number of spars, material of
wing, wing dimensions as well as locations of concentrated structural loadings. The
software also incorporates options to compute bending, shear and torsional stresses
individually if the internal load values are known before. The graphical user
interface development environment (GUIDE) along with application programming
in MATLAB version 7 has been used to develop the software.

2. Methodology
A multispar design of a fighter wing with its corresponding airfoil section (cross
section of wing) represented as a multicell box as shown in Fig. 1 has been
considered for stress analysis. Although the skin of the nose of the airfoil section
carries some shear load, it is small in comparison to the shear load carried by the
webs and therefore, it is often neglected, moreover the trailing edge of the airfoil
section is usually occupied by flaps/aileron and thus it can be neglected from the
multicell box beam. Thus multicell airfoil section in Fig. 1 with leading and
trailing edge skins removed (shown as dotted line in Fig. 1) can be idealized to
get a basic idealized multicell box beam as given in Fig. 2 which is made of shear
only resisting thin skins/webs and with booms (concentrated areas) resisting the
entire bending load. Thus in this analysis the skin/web is considered to be
ineffective in bending.
Having chosen the multispar wing, the next step is to evaluate the loads and
the resulting stresses as illustrated in the flow chart in Fig. 3. Initially the load
estimation is carried out, and then these load distributions will be used to evaluate
the bending moment and shear force on any spanwise section of the wing.
Subsequently, the resulting direct stresses, shear stresses and shear centre of a
multi-spar wing will be determined.

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Development of Educational Software for Stress Analysis of an Aircraft Wing 325

Fig. 1. Typical Multispar Wing with its Sectional View [9].

Fig. 2. Idealized Section of a Multicell Wing.

Fig. 3. Flowchart for Stress Analysis.

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326 J. S. Mohamed Ali and Tazkera Sadeq

2.1. Load estimation

Wing Load Distribution
Under various flight conditions, the aircraft will experience bending, shear and
torsional loading. The wing is exposed to various types of loadings such as
aerodynamic lift and drag forces, concentrated loads due to engines, missiles or
undercarriage and wing structure distributed mass loads. As the drag loads are very
minimal compared to lift forces, its effect has been neglected in further calculations.
The aerodynamic and mass loads of the wing are distributed along the wing in
proportion to the chord distribution along the span of the wing. As the distributed
aerodynamic load (pa) and the distributed structural weight of the wing (pwing) are
directed in opposite directions, the excessive distributed load (pexc) is determined as

pexc = pa − pwing
(W − Ww ) fn op
pexc = c (1)
S
where c is the spanwise chord distribution, W and Ww are the weight of the
aircraft and wing respectively, f is factor of safety, nop is the limit load factor and
S being the wing area.

The concentrated load from the units located on the wing are determined from

Punit = Punit fn op (2)

These forces are applied through the centre of gravity of the units and
are considered to be directed perpendicularly to the plane of the chords
acting downwards.

The half span of a wing may be approximated to a cantilever beam loaded

with distributed excessive load pexe and concentrated forces for the units located
on the wing as shown in Fig. 4. The shear force and bending moment diagrams
are obtained from the wing load distribution as a first step of stress analysis
process. The developed software generate the load distribution, shear force and
bending moment distribution along the span of the wing once the input to
calculate pexc is given.

Fig. 4. Resultant Load on the Wing.

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Development of Educational Software for Stress Analysis of an Aircraft Wing 327

2.2. Bending stresses

The procedure to evaluate the bending stresses and the shear stresses given below
are based on Megson [7]. The bending moment at any chordwise section along
the span of the wing can be determined from its bending moment diagram. In an
idealized multispar wing the bending moments are resisted by spar booms (spar
flanges) only, which produces direct bending stresses in the booms. The direct
stress system for such a wing section with general load is given by:

M y I xx − M x I xy M x I yy − M y I xy
σz = x+ y (3)
I xx I yy − I xy2 I xx I yy − I xy2

As shown in Fig. 2, the coordinates (x,y) in Eq. (3) represents the location of
any boom area on the cross-section and the sectional properties are referred to the
axes Cxy in which the origin coincides with the centroid of the cross section area.
The second moments of area are given as

I xx = ∫ y 2 dA = ∑ Ay 2 

I yy = ∫ x 2 dA = ∑ Ax 2  (4)

I xy = ∫ xydA = ∑ Axy 


2.3. Shear stresses

Unlike bending moments, the shear force at any chordwise section along the span
produces shear stresses that are resisted by the skin and the webs of the spar. The
shear force at any section can be obtained from the shear force diagram evaluated
from the load estimation part. In order to evaluate shear stresses, a general N-cell
section as shown in Fig. 5 is used to develop the equations required for shear. The
cell comprises of booms and skin panels and the wing section is subjected to
shear loading Sx and Sy whose line of action do not necessarily pass through the
shear centre S. Therefore, the resulting shear flow distribution is due to the
combined effects of shear and torsion.

Fig. 5. Multi-cell Wing Section Subjected to Shear Loads.

The procedure followed in this work to evaluate the shear stress for a multicell
problem is as following:

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328 J. S. Mohamed Ali and Tazkera Sadeq

Step 1: Statically indeterminate multicell beam made up of N cells as shown

in Fig. 5 can be made statically determinate by ‘cutting’ a skin panel in each cell,
thus there are N unknowns which are the values of closed section shear flow at the
cuts of each cell, i.e qsoI, qsoII …. qsoN.

Step 2: Find the open section shear flow qb given by

 S I − S y I xy  n   S y I yy − S x I xy  n 
qb = −  x xx
 I I − I2   ∑ Br xr  −  2   ∑ Br yr  (5)
 xx yy xy   r =1   I xx I yy − I xy   r =1 

Step 3: Use compatibility condition θ1 = θ 2 = θ3 .......... = θ ( N −1) = θ N that provides

(N-1) equations

where θR i s the twist per unit length of a Rth cell which can be given as

1 ds (6)
θR = ∫ q
2 AR G R R t

As for a closed section q = qb + q so , then θR becomes

1 ds
θR =
2 AR GR
[
− q s ,o, R −1δ R −1, R + q s ,o, Rδ R − q s ,o, R +1δ R +1, R + ∫ qb
t
] (7)
R

where

δR-1, R - ∫ds/t for the wall common to the Rth and (R-1)th cells,
δR - ∫ds/t for all the walls enclosing the Rth cell and
δR+1, R - ∫ds/t for the wall common to the Rth and (R+1)th cells.
Step 4 : Use Moment Equilibrium equation

External Moment = Internal Moment

N N
S xη 0 − S y ξ 0 = ∑ ∫ qb pds + ∑ 2 AR q s ,o, R (8)
R =1 R R =1

where p is the moment arm of the force due to qb about the moment centre.

Equations obtained from step 3 and step 4 can be written in a matrix form as:
[ Aij ]NXN {qs ,o,i } NX 1 = {Bij } (9)
NX 1

where N is the number of cells.

From Eqs. (5)-(8), one can see that elements of matrix Aij is a made up of δij
and elements of Bij is made up of qb and δij. By solving the system of linear
simultaneous algebraic Eqs. (9) with the known values of qb (from Eq. (5)), the
unknown shear flows qs,o,i where i = 1,2…..N can be found. Once qs,o is obtained
for all the cells, the final shear flows for each cell can be obtained from the

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Development of Educational Software for Stress Analysis of an Aircraft Wing 329

relation: qi = qbi + qso,i. Finally, the shear stresses on any web or skin can be
obtained by dividing the shear flow by the respective thickness of the web or skin.

2.4. Shear centre

The shear centre is a point in the cross section through which shear loads produce
no twisting effects. To locate the shear centre of a N cell section, an arbitrary
shear load is applied at the shear centre and the resulting shear flow is evaluated.
The procedure is as follows
Step 1: Similar to the shear stress analysis, firstly introducing cuts to make the
structure statically determinate results in N unknowns which are the values of
closed section shear flow of each cell qsoI, qsoII …. qsoN.

Step 2: Find the open section shear flow qb as given by Eq. (5).

Step 3: Use the condition that shear loads acting through the shear centre of a
section produces zero twist, θ = 0, i.e. θ1 = θ2 = θ3 ……. θN = 0, which results in N
equations that can be written as

[ K ij ]NXN {qsoi }NX 1 = {M ij }NX 1 (10)

where Kij is a made up of δij and Mij is made up of qb and δij. By solving the
system of simultaneous equations (10), the unknown shear flows (qsoi where i=1,
2….N) can be determined. Once qs,o is obtained for all the cells, the final shear
flows for each cell can be obtained from the relation: qi = qbi + qso,i.

Step 4: Use moment equilibrium equation to determine the position of the

shear centre.

2.5. Shear stresses due to torsion

The multicell wing section illustrated in Fig. 6 comprises N cells and carries a
torque T which generates individual but unknown torques in each cell. Therefore, a
constant shear flow qI, qII,….qN is generated in each cell which are the unknowns to
be determined. The procedure to determine these unknowns are as follows

Fig. 6. Multicell Wing Section Subjected to Torsion.

Step 1: Use the condition that the total torque is

N
T = ∑ 2 AR qR (11)
R =1

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 330 J. S. Mohamed Ali and Tazkera Sadeq

where AR is area of each cell.

Step 2: Use compatibility condition θ1 = θ 2 = θ3 .......... = θ ( N −1) = θ N that provides

(N-1) equations.

Therefore, Step 1 and Step 2 will give N number of equations for N unknowns
which can be arranged in a matrix form, as:

[ Dij ] NXN {qsoi }NX 1 = {Eij }NX 1 (12)

where N is the number of cells, Dij is made up of δij and Eij is made up of T.
By solving the system of simultaneous equations in Eq. (12), the unknown shear
flows can be obtained in each cell. Finally the shear stresses on any web or skin
due to torsion can be found by dividing the shear flow by the respective thickness
of the web or skin.

3. Results and Discussion

From the foregoing discussion one can understand the difficulty in solving multicell
problems manually in the classroom lectures. From equations (9),(10) and (12) it can
be realized that to analyze any multicell beam made of N cells under shear or torsion,
as well as for to find the shear centre location one has to solve N simultaneous
algebraic equations. In this work, MATLAB built-in solver was used to solve these
equations. The programming for the stress analysis components discussed in the
previous sections was carried out in MATLAB version 7 using the graphical user
interface development environment (GUIDE). Even though the formulation presented
is for general unsymmetric multicell box beam, the programming has been done only
for symmetric multicell sections since most of the high speed aircraft wings are
symmetric. The software is user friendly and no prior knowledge of MATLAB is
required to utilize it. The programming is made based on generalized formulation in
order to apply it to various aircraft wing configurations with different combinations of
wing material, number of spars, dimensions of the wing section as well as locations of
structural concentrated loadings. The software can also be used to analyze a single cell
as a special case.
The first pop up window of the program gives the user the option to carryout
either load estimation and to find values of shear force and bending moment at any
section on the wing or if these values are already known, the user may directly find
the bending stresses, shear stresses due to shear, shear stresses due to torsion or the
shear centre independently without going through the load estimation.

The inputs for stress analysis are generally the number of spars, loads, boom
areas with its location and the web length with thickness. These inputs are
prompted from a window with an input title as shown in Fig. 7, so it is absolutely
easy to work with. If one needs to start from the basic load calculation then
additional inputs such as the spanwise chord distribution c(y), the weight of the
aircraft W and wing Ww respectively, the factor of safety f, the limit load factor nop
and the wing area S are needed. The output will be the load distribution, shear
force and bending moment diagrams which are given graphically, then it can be
followed by stress analysis where the output will be stresses listed along with

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Development of Educational Software for Stress Analysis of an Aircraft Wing 331

their reference boom area or webs. Typical input and output GUI windows are
shown in Figs. 7 and 8 respectively.

Fig. 7. Typical MATLAB GUIDE Input Windows.

Fig. 8. Typical MATLAB GUIDE Output Windows.

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332 J. S. Mohamed Ali and Tazkera Sadeq

3.1. Validation

3.1.1. Validation for bending stress

Figure 9 shows a two-cell section for which bending stress analysis has been
conducted with an external bending moment of 100 kNm applied on the vertical
plane. The final results obtained from the program are compared with the results
from Megson [7] for two typical booms as in Table 1.
Table 1. Validation for Bending Stress.
Direct Megson [7] Software Error%
Boom
Stresses (103) N/mm2 (103) N/mm2

1 σ1 59.0 59.2535 0.42%

6 σ6 -47.0 -47.1229 0.26%

Fig. 9. Two Cell Section under Bending.

3.1.2. Validation for shear stresses due to shear load

Curtis [8] provided a solution for shear stresses due to shear load for the three-cell
problem shown in Fig. 10. The results from the literature are compared with
computed results as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Typical Shear Stress Results for a Three Cell Section.

Curtis [8] Software Error%
Wall Shear Stress Shear Stress
N/mm2 N/mm2
1 5 -4316.0 -4316.3341 0.01%
2 6 -3631.6 -3631.7443 0.01%
3 7 -3149.2 -3149.0207 0.01%

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Development of Educational Software for Stress Analysis of an Aircraft Wing 333

Fig. 10. Three Cell Section under Shear.

3.1.3. Validation for shear stresses due to torsion

Niu [9] has given the solution of a two-cell problem under pure torsion. The
section is shown in Fig. 11. The results from the program are compared with [9]
in Table 3.
Table 3. Validation for Shear Stresses due to Torsion.
Niu [9] Software
Wall Shear Stress Shear Stress Error%
N/mm2 N/mm2
1 4 22420 22421.5247 0.01%

2 5 560 560.5381 0.10%

Fig. 11. Two Cell Section under Torsion.

3.1.4. Validation for shear centre

The shear centre of the five-cell problem in Fig. 12 has been evaluated by Bruhn
[10] and the present software is validated for shear centre against this results. The
shear centre is taken to be a distance, x, from the web of the first spar as shown in
Fig. 12. The results are compared in Table 4.

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334 J. S. Mohamed Ali and Tazkera Sadeq

Table 4. Validation for Shear Centre.

Bruhn [10] Software Error%
19.47 mm 19.3603 mm 0.56%

Fig. 12. Five Cell Section.

From Tables 1-4, it can be seen that the results for all the four cases are in
good agreement with the literature values. Therefore, the program has been
validated for all the stresses and shear centre computations. As the program has
been validated, various case studies may be conducted to determine the capability
of the program.

3.2. Case studies

3.2.1. Case I: Loads and stresses on an aircraft wing
To demonstrate the capability of the software, a typical fighter aircraft with delta
wing configuration shown in Fig. 13 is chosen for analysis. There are two
concentrated mass loadings on each half span wing. The wing is assumed to be
made of a multispar which can be represented as a multicell box beam. The
specifications of the aircraft wing are as listed in Table 5.

Fig. 13. The Three Views of the Typical Fighter Aircraft [11].

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Development of Educational Software for Stress Analysis of an Aircraft Wing 335

Table 5. Aircraft Specifications.

Item Notation Value
Half-wing Span b 3.6 m
2
Wing Area S 23 m

Root Chord cr 5.97 m

Tip Chord ct 0.465 m

Missile weight (each) wi 870.6 N

Maximum Take-off weight W 96800 N

Wing Structural Weight Ww 5730 N

The aircraft is considered to be in steady level flight with an operational load

factor of 1 and a factor of safety of 1.5 is assumed. The load estimation part of the
program will compute the distributions of wing load, bending moment and shear
force. The results are displayed on a graphical user interface. The user may key in
the location of the desired section on the wing and the value of shear force and
bending moment at that section will be interpolated from the graph and displayed
to the user. The resulting graphical user interface is shown in Fig. 8.

The results show that the bending moment and shear force is highest at the
root and lowest near the tip, as expected. Therefore, the values of bending
moment and shear force at any point along the span of the wing may be
determined and consequently used to find the bending and shear stresses for any
section across the span of the wing.

Following the load estimation process, the stresses are evaluated at different
locations along the span of the wing. The multispar wing is assumed to be made
of five-cell wing section as shown in Fig. 14, which represents a typical airfoil
section used for high-speed aircraft. The details of a typical wing section are
assumed as in Table 6. It should be noted that the taper effect of the wing has
been included only in the load estimation process but the shear stresses and
bending stresses are evaluated neglecting the taper effect.

Fig. 14. A Typical Five-cell Section.

The values from Table 6 are given as the input through GUI windows
including the input for span, will get the output as required stresses listed at that

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336 J. S. Mohamed Ali and Tazkera Sadeq

span. Thus using this software the bending stress at any boom area on any section
along the span of the wing can be determined (Typical results for 2 booms are in
Table 7). Similarly, the shear stresses at any spar web and skin panel at any
section along the span of the wing may be determined (Typical results for 2 walls
are in Table 8 and the typical GUI output is in Fig. 8).

Table 6. Typical Wing Section Specifications at the Root of the Wing.

Boom
Boom Thickness Cell Area
Area Wall
No (mm) (mm2)
(mm2)

1,7 1290 Spar Webs 3

2,8 1936 1 2, 7 8 3
Cell 1: 215000
3,9 645 2 3, 8 9 3 Cell 2: 250000
Cell 3: 255000
4 . 10 1290 3 4, 9 10 3 Cell 4: 155000
Cell 5: 115000
5 , 11 1936 4 5, 10 11 2.5

6 , 12 645 5 6, 11 12 2.5

Table 7. Variation of Bending Stresses

along the Span of the Wing for Five Cell Section.
Direct x=¼L x=½L x=¾L
Stresses N/mm2 N/mm2 N/mm2
σ1 0.37241 1.7578 6.0458

σ2 0.55862 2.6367 9.0687

Table 8. Variation of Shear Stresses due to Shear

along the Span of the Wing for Five Cell Section.
x=¼L x=½L x=¾L
Wall
N/mm2 N/mm2 N/mm2
1 7 1.303 3.8617 8.3688
3 9 1.3675 4.053 8.7833

3.2.2. Case II: Preliminary design

The stress analysis software developed can be used as a preliminary design tool.
The final stress values obtained can be weighed against the direct and shear yield
stresses of the wing structural material by defining margin of safety (MS) as
σ yield
MS = − 1 ≥ 0 for direct stress
σ applied
τ yield
MS = − 1 ≥ 0 for shear stress (13)
τ applied

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Development of Educational Software for Stress Analysis of an Aircraft Wing 337

This measure aids in failure prediction as well as a means to determine

appropriate dimensions of wing structural components.

Table 9. Bending Stresses with Margin of Safety.

Bending Stress Margin of Safety

Boom 2
N/mm (MS)
1 59.2535 5.99
2 94.7123 3.37
3 47.1229 7.79

Using this package a preliminary design can be made by carrying out parametric
analysis by choosing the boom areas, web length/thickness or material properties as
a parameter. In each case, the software lists down the stresses with the display
whether the design is safe or not. Table 9 shows the typical results of bending
stresses for 2 cell section (Fig. 9) under a bending moment of 100 kNm with the
material yield stress of 414 MPa. The values of the Margin of Safety can be used by
designers to check if the boom area chosen produce direct stresses within the
allowable stress limits or not. Thus the designer can continue to vary the boom areas
until an optimum design is obtained. Similarly other parametric study can be carried
out to arrive at a preliminary structural design which will be very useful for a course
on conceptual aircraft design and airframe structural design.

4. Conclusions
MATLAB GUIDE based stress analysis package have been developed. The
software is user friendly and no prior knowledge of MATLAB is required to work
with it. The program has been developed to handle aircraft wings with multispar
configurations under different loading conditions. The software can generate the
load distribution based on the inputs and plots the shear force and bending moment
diagram and evaluates the stresses along the span of the wing on demand.
Parametric analysis for different materials of wing, boom areas, web thickness
and different loadings on the wings can be carried out using this package. Thus
the package can be used for preliminary design and sizing of an aircraft wing. The
present software is expected to be a useful tool to enhance the teaching learning
process of courses on aircraft structures and aircraft structural design. Work is in
progress to develop similar software for an aircraft fuselage and to couple it with
this existing software to come out with complete aircraft structural design
software useful for the students.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge the Research Management Centre,
International Islamic University Malaysia for support of this work.

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338 J. S. Mohamed Ali and Tazkera Sadeq

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Journal of Engineering Science and Technology June 2012, Vol. 7(3)