Rashmi Kant, Yoshiaki Abe
Reducing structural weight and improving performance efficiency are main objectives in next-generation aircraft. Following that, this study has been conducted with the objective of designing a composite aircraft using novel integrated aerostructural design framework that combines inertia-relief-based load estimation, fully coupled static aeroelastic analysis, and surrogate-assisted multi-objective Bayesian optimization (MBO). This study has been conducted in three major steps: (1) inertia relief analysis for load factor estimation, (2) structural sizing of composite aircraft through a fully stressed design (FSD) approach, and (3) MBO incorporating composite materials; carbon fiber–reinforced polymers (CFRPs) and carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (CFRTPs) combinations which offer substantial performance advantages. In this study, Boeing 737-class configuration is used as the reference model. In inertia relief analysis, aerodynamic loads from inviscid Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) were coupled with linear static structural analysis to evaluate load factors estimation which are subsequently incorporated into structural sizing through linear static structural analysis coupled with an iterative fully stressed design (FSD). Finally, MBO enabled aeroelastic consistency across generations, producing Pareto-optimal trade-offs between structural weight and aerodynamic drag. The optimized designs achieved a 20–25% reduction in structural weight while satisfying strength, stiffness, and stability requirements, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed framework for lightweight composite aircraft development.