KWAME NKRUMAH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING PROGRAM

STRUCTURAL DESIGN OF A 75 SEATER AIRCRAFT INITIAL

CONSIDERATIONS

Group Members

Samuel Danquah
Isaac Agbettor
Edem Dugbenoo
Jaures Ammossou

INTRODUCTION
Given the task of carrying out the structural design on the
fuselage of a 75 seater aircraft, the team embarked on a search of
already existing aircraft that have been designed to meet this
passenger requirement
Two major aircraft types arose from this search. These are:
The Bombardier CRJ 705
The Embraer 170

The Embraer 170 has been designed to carry 75 passengers over

short regional flights in single class arrangement
The Bombardier CRJ 705 which was designed to compete with the
Embraer 170 also has a 2-class seating arrangement which
carries 75 passengers. It uses two General Electric Engines and
has a cruise speed of Mach 0.8.
After extensive analysis of the two aircraft mentioned above, the
Bombardier CRJ 705 was selected as the model on which fuselage
structural analysis will be carried out.
Data obtained on the Bombardier CRJ 705 pertinent to the
impending structural analysis are detailed in the table below
Parameter
Seating Capacity
Length
Wingspan
Height
Wing Area
Fuselage Diameter

Value
2-class configuration ( 75
Passengers)
36.40 m
24.85 m
7.51 m
70.61 m2
2.7 m

MTOW
Cruise Speed
Thrust
Tail Span
Fuselage Length
MAC

36504 kg (80477.5 pounds)

829 km/h
58400 N
8.54 m
36.4 m
3.015m

The flight envelope for the aircraft at sea level is given below
3
2.5
2
positive stall curve

1.5

negative stall curve

upper limit
lower limit

0.5

vertical line

0
-0.5

50

100

150

200

250

300

diagonal

-1
-1.5

Structural analysis will be carried out on the aircraft at points Vc

and Vd since these represent the operating points where the
greatest loads are experienced on the aircraft.
Taking Point Vc, the loads experienced on the aircraft are
calculated as follows:
Vc = 107.5 m/s
N = 2.5
The Moment of inertia about the centre of gravity is:

Ixx=330038.0273
Iyy=1567069.4108
Izz=1619612.6982
Lift=3186.2226
Looking at lift and drag coefficients for similar sized aircraft, the
estimated values for the Bombardier CRJ 700 are 0.45 and 0.0305
respectively.
Thus the Lift and Drag Force at the operating point chosen are
3186.2226 and 215.955
The aircraft stalls at an angle of attack of 15 degrees
The Pitching moment coefficient of the airfoil at zero lift is -0.041.
The leading edge wing sweep angle is about 25 degrees.
For transport aircraft, the pitching moment coefficient derivative
is about -1.1 per radian.
Thus for the stall angle of the aircraft, the pitching moment
coefficient is found to be -0.31277.
The Moment generated on the fuselage is thus -471522.0254.
Angle of Yaw to be allowed for is 10 degrees.
An iterative procedure was used to determine the Tail Load as
-101336.287 N (acting downwards).
The Torque produced by asymmetric loading of the tail plane is
The fuselage diameter is 2.7m at one end and 0.61m at the other.
The length of the rear fuselage is 7.8m.
Aluminum 2024 will be used for building the rear fuselage.
In the analysis, the rear fuselage is considered to taper uniformly.

The rear fuselage weight is 11,129.9 N

The tail-plane weight is also 5729.67 N
The rear fuselage skin area is 40.9mm2.
The weights of the various sections indicated are thus given
below:
Rear Wide End Weight=2307.9761
Section AA Weight=2134.4505
Section BB Weight=1438.6385
Rear Narrow End Weight=521.4316
The tail plane centre of gravity has also been found to be at
36.089m (7.33m from the rear wide end) from the leading edge.

The Shear and Bending Moments at the various sections were

calculated and obtained as follows:

Sy at Wide End=208409.4548
Sx at Wide End=133287.1858
Mx at Wide End=1230024.405
My at Wide End=999653.8933
Sy at AA=182310.198
Sx at AA=133287.1858
Mx at AA=970500.9857
My at AA=999653.8933
Sy at BB=197403.7743
Sx at BB=133287.1858
Mx at BB=783720.7392
My at BB=999653.8933
Total Rear Fuselage Torque=736519.6106

For Case D, the Tail Load is found to be -262716.2505.

Fuselage Design
Since the Tail and Fin Loads for Case D are comparatively higher
than that of Case A, the rear fuselage will be designed to
withstand the stresses under Case D.
Aluminium 2024 will be used for the rear fuselage. Its properties
are given as follows:

Shear Strength = 125 N/mm2

Proof Stress = 75 N/mm2
Mx for wide end = 2359684.1495
My for wide end = 6672584.7963
From calculations, maximum direct stress for each section occurs
at boom 12. Also, the maximum stress on boom 12 occurs at
section BB followed by CC and then the wide end.