Mechanical response of a hexagonal grid stiffened design of a pressurized cylindrical shell-application to aircraft fuselage

Aircraft structures must meet several design requirements such as, minimum weight, high stiffness and fail safe design; these competing criteria must all be met by the final design. A new stringer design concept for conventional aircraft fuselage proposed in [1] showed some encouraging results; this paper is a continuation of the work there in where supporting frame elements are added to the fuselage structure. The proposed design is simulated using a finite element model that has been validated through experimental data available from the literature. Results show improved performance of the structure in terms of eigenfrequencies and virtually unchanged performance in terms of stresses and displacements.