• Separate modeling for base structures (plates/shells) and stiffeners

• Static, buckling, vibration and prestressed vibration responses of stiffened plates in terms of both mechanical and thermal loads

• Optimization of optimal stiffener shape and tow-steered varying fiber path angles

• Design for fabrication by including manufacturing constraints

More

• Structural analysis of additive manufacturing bio-inspired structures

• Abaqus based thermo-mechanical analysis

More

Modeling and testing of an inflatable tube and an inflatable wing for airborne wing design analysis studies. Relevant details can be found in:

Zhao, W., Miglani, J., Desai, S., Kapania, R. K., Schetz, J. A., Aris, A. and Panwar, S. S., “Structural and Aeroelastic Design, Analysis, and Experiments of Inflatable Airborne Wings,” AIAA SciTech 2021, January, 2021, Virtual Event, AIAA 2021-1817, [DOI:10.2514/6.2021-1817]

More

Focus on aircraft multidisciplinary design, analysis and optimization including:

• Various optimization studies: composite stacking sequence table, stiffener shape

• Aircraft design: weight minimization, fuel weight minimization, drag minimization, etc.;

• Multidisciplinary design, analysis and optimization

• High-performance computing

Selected publications:

Zhao, W., Jrad, M., Gupta, R. and Kapania, R. K., "Multidisciplinary Design, Analysis and Optimization of Performance Adaptive Aeroelastic Wings,'' AIAA Atmosphere Flight Mechanics Conference, AIAA SciTech 2017, Grapevine, TX, Jan, 2017, AIAA 2017-1392

Zhao, W., Gupta, A., Miglani, J., Regan, C. D., Kapania, R. K. and Seiler, P. J., "Component Data Assisted Finite Element Model Updating of Composite Flying-wing Aircraft using Multi-level Optimization,'' Aerospace Science and Technology, 2019, [Link]

More

Studying the interaction of aerodynamic, structures and inertial load.

More