Aerodynamic Design and Strength Analysis of the Wing for the Purpose of Assessing the Influence of the Bell-Shaped Lift Distribution

This article deals with aerodynamic and structural calculations of several wing designs to compare the influence of the shape on the lift distribution. Various shapes of wings for the required lift and bending moment were optimized to minimize drag and thereby reduce fuel consumption. One example was a wing with a bell-shaped lift distribution, which was proposed by Ludwig Prandtl and has been forgotten over the years. The first part of the paper focuses on minimization of the wing drag coefficient by a low fidelity method and the results are compared with the CFD calculation with good agreement. In the structural part of the analysis, the inner layout of the studied wings was designed. The structural design, containing elementary wing components and optimization loop, was carried out to minimize weight with respect to panel buckling. From these calculations the weights of wings were obtained and compared. In the last part of this study, an analysis of flight performance of an airplane with presented wings was performed for a selected flight mission. Results indicated that, for the free optimized wing, the fuel saving was about six percent.