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A lighter wing design, will all metal wing be design to way less than fabric covered?

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SpainCub

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2012
Messages
376
Location
Madrid, Spain
Hi all,

Been toying (more like climbing a steep learning curve) with the idea of building a lighter wing for a popular class of airplane... with the addition of a new design as far as airfoil is concerned.

Well, the initial thought was go composites for a design... I finally concluded that a D-Spar for the front spar (two spar design) was the optimal weight to strength ratio for my design, specially since most of the load will be in the front spar... Still struggled to get a spar design for the rear spar settled that was backward compatible with airplane to use an the thinner airfoil in consideration.

Well, after further thought and some more calculations (man I dream in XLS now) I have come to the idea that you might just get a lighter wing if design in all metal... not like the carbon+fabric idea I had originally envisioned (and CFD seems to agree.)

I then came upon this image,

13718582_10207856364501988_1390213382252728179_n.jpg


Here you can see RANS new airplane, and the concept of a D front spar from EXTRUDED AL. Looks a little heavy, but they plan to test to 9+6- which is way out of where I was headed... 6+4- for normal category .

In CF, I get the D-Spar, here? I'm not following other than the build time advantage. To me a Z shape metal spar would have enough strength but the longer built time...

Screen Shot 2016-09-14 at 00.33.45.png

Thoughts?
 
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