Adaptation of Sailfish topology in fuselage design and performance comparison with modern fuselage

Nature has always inspired human to adapt designs in order to get better performance and results. Adapting a new shape or feature in any part of the aircraft has always been an extensive field of research. One important part that plays a major role in a better flight performance is the fuselage. The conventional fuselage used in aircraft is round shaped with considerable drag thus causing a decrease in efficiency. The Sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus) being the fastest fish in the world has a unique shape which is the lowest drag producing shape in nature. The main aim of this project is to incorporate the structural bodily design of the Sailfish for the fuselage and thus comparing the load distribution on the body with that experienced by today modern aircraft (in this case Airbus A320 is taken as reference) when being operated under the same conditions. The Sailfish design was made in CATIA and ANSYS was used for CFD analysis. Similar procedure was followed for A320 fuselage design with the geometry being already defined. Both the designs were analyzed under same operational conditions by varying them according to general flight condition. The pressure and flow distribution comparison was done along with structural analysis depicting the stress distribution. A comparative study of the flow variation around the sailfish in air and water was also performed. A much smoother flow was observed in case of the design adopted from the Sailfish in comparison to the conventional fuselage design, thus providing evidence of the design being more efficient.