AN EFFECTIVE CRASHWORTHINESS DESIGN OPTIMIZATION METHODOLOGY TO IMPROVE HELICOPTER LANDING GEAR ENERGY ABSORPTION

摘要

Crashworthiness design optimization problems are continuously challenged by inherent complexity of long simulation time, numerical instability, and unavailability of sensitivity analysis. In recent years, surrogate-model-based design optimization using design of experiments and response surface methodology (DOE/RSM) has proven to be a promising way to achieve the improved design for crashworthiness problems. However, the method is still hampered by a large number of function evaluations for a large number of design variables or low accuracy for small sample size. This paper presents an effective simulation-based optimization algorithm for optimal design of large-scale, computationally expensive crashworthiness problems. The proposed optimization algorithm is called the sequential regularized multiquadric regression with output space mapping (SRMQ/OSM). The proposed method is demonstrated on a generic helicopter skid landing gear to improve the energy absorption efficiency with prescribed design constraints. The results show that the proposed approach converged quickly to a feasible design with no constraint violation.