Engineering Design and Documentation with MATLAB

Live scripts, files, and slides for "Engineering Design and Documentation with MATLAB" Demo

In the modern digital era, knowledge is expanding very quickly. Knowledge is becoming difficult to retain despite the vast amounts of information within software. How can the engineering and science organizations adapt to minimize the loss of knowledge moving forward? This content stems from a demo called "Engineering Design and Documentation with MATLAB" discussing how MATLAB's tools provide a streamline solution to the growing issue of knowledge "discontinuities".
The analysis topic performed has two sections:
1) Wing Loading Profile
2) FEA Stress Analysis
Wing Loading:
Develops and documents an analytical model of the loads on the wing of a small passenger aircraft. Using the MATLAB Live Editor we can incorporate math equations, descriptive text, and images into our calculations to clearly document our work. Completed live scripts can be published in PDF or HTML.
The following components are calculated analytically using the Symbolic Math Toolbox to produce the total load profile. Units will be carried along our calculations to ensure dimensional consistency and allow for simple unit conversions. The list of units supported in MATLAB can be found here: List of units supported with MATLAB Symbolic Math Toolbox.
Components:
-Aerodynamic Lift
-Weight of Wing
-Weight of Fuel

The total load is then calculated by combining the three components above. Values for the specific aircraft parameters are plugged in to provide results for the specific aircraft. Finally, the analytical representation is converted to a MATLAB function that can be leveraged for any downstream projects for this particular aircraft wing design.

FEA Stress Analysis of 3D Aircraft Wing
This Live Script performs a stress analysis of an aircraft wing and visualizes the results. It relies on a 3D CAD model of an aircraft wing, the analytically-derived wing load profile found in the Wing Loading Live Script (TotalWingLoad.m), and the Partial Differential Equations (PDE) Toolbox. The general approach for this analysis is outlined below:
Import CAD Model of the wing
Mesh the wing model with tetrahedral elements
Perform unit conversion from feet to meters
Specify the material properties of the wing
Define boundary conditions (Leverages results from previous live script via the function TotalWingLoad).
Visualize Results
Finally, a high level PDF report is generated using MATLAB Report Generator. NOTE: This type of automatic report generation is a game-changer for individuals that currently manually copying and pasting analyses results into presentations and reports (only to do it all over when the analysis results change).