Material

[rkennerly]

In an effort to produce a more realistic solution, our team has begun to consider the use of carbon fiber as a material. However, how can we calculate weight and therefore cost of the aircraft? I understand that there is an excel worksheet for this based on design variables; is there a way we can edit this worksheet to account for the properties of carbon fiber?

[ptc-5237290]

It is good that you are considering carbon fiber for your aircraft. You can certainly calculate the weight and the cost of the aircraft but will probably not be able to do it with the provided Excel sheet without some modifications. I suggest using unit method to do these calculations. You will need to find the unit cost per area of the carbon fiber of your choice. Then you can multiply that by the total surface area of the aircraft. The surface area information can be obtained from the CAD models. Similarly you will need to determine the unit weight per area of the carbon fiber of your choice (I suspect that the suppliers might be able to provide that information) and then multiply that by the total area to get the total weight.

Feel free to modify the Excel sheet to best serve your needs.

Thanks

-Dr. Khalid