Optimization of the multi-bubble passenger cabin stiffening scheme of a hypersonic aircraft

Hypersonic stratospheric vehicles are emerging as the future generation aircraft, with the aerospace community focusing its efforts on designing new prototypes for their launch in the next years. In these designs, the passenger cabin is based on the multi-lobe concept to benefit from wider fuselages that improve the lift-to-drag ratio. This structure is subjected to very demanding thermal and pressure loading conditions and can not be over-expanded to avoid compromising its structural integrity. Tension rods are arranged as a solution to stiffen the cabin. However, the areas and arrangement of these cables might not be distributed in the most efficient way. Therefore, this paper proposes an optimization strategy to design a cable layout seeking a lightweight solution with the minimum number of entities. The methodology will be applied to the STRATOFLY vehicle, a hypersonic air breathing concept capable of covering antipodal routes in less than three hours.