| A light and reliable aircraft is the goal of aircraft designers. It is essential to design the skins as efficiently as possible since wing skins comprise more than fifty percent of structural weight of a wing. The wing skin consists of many different types of material and thickness configurations at various locations. Selecting a thickness for each location is perhaps the most significant design task. Models for choosing optimal thicknesses were developed in this dissertation according to the criteria of maximum reliability, minimum weight, and a tradeoff between the two. In addition, a new notion of duality was introduced to relate these three problems. |
