Medium Fidelity Aeroelastic Wingbox Optimisation

In aeroelastic research the interaction between the structural wing and the aerodynamics is investigated. Currently the wingbox structures, as other components, are manufactured out of composite materials to replace the metallic airplanes. Composites have the ability to be designed by defining the orientation and thickness of a laminate. This...

Design of a modular fuselage for commercial aircraft: To cope with seasonal variation in passenger demand

The subject of this research is a new concept of modular aircraft designed to cope with the seasonal variation in passenger demand by opening the fuselage and increasing its length with extra bits of fuselages. The goal is to find out if this new aircraft concept is more profitable than the current alternatives. Previous work have looked at...

Design and Aeroelastic Analysis of Flexible Wind Turbine Blades: Highly flexible materials in wind turbine blades to reduce maximum loading without compromising energy yield

A wind turbine is designed to produce a maximum amount of energy at minimum cost while it withstands any possible wind condition. In the wind conditions with the highest wind speeds the wind turbine has to cope with the most extreme loads. In these most extreme cases the wind turbine is parked, the blades do not rotate, and the blades deform...

Design of Morphing Leading and Trailing Edge Surfaces for Camber and Twist Control

The application of morphing structures in conventional aircraft is a method to improve aircraft performance by both reducing the total fuel consumption for a given mission profile, or by allowing one type of aircraft to perform a wider range of missions. The current generation of aircraft does not widely use morphing technology to optimize...

Design of a blade section featuring passive load alleviation capabilities resulting from variable stiffness morphing structures

The main objective of this MSc thesis project is to investigate the load alleviation potential of a variable stiffness bi-stable morphing blade section under extreme gust conditions by designing such a blade section. This project builds on the work of Arrieta et al. and Kuder et al. and is based on the DU 93-W-210 airfoil. The bi-stable element...

Semi-Analytical Solution to Buckling of Variable-Stiffness Composite Panels (Plates and Shallow Cylindrical Shells)

Variable-stiffness panels have previously shown enhanced buckling performance compared to constant-stiffness panels, due to the beneficial load and stiffness redistribution. Two semianalytical models based on the Galerkin method and the Ritz method have been developed in order to solve the buckling problem of variable-stiffness composite panels ...

Aero-elastic analysis of a large airborne wind turbine: Prediction of divergence, control reversal and effectiveness, and flutter of a tethered wing

The objective of this research is the simulation of aero-elastic behaviour of Makani’s large airborne wind turbine. This tethered wing operates in crosswind motion, and is equipped with on-board wind turbines. The tether-bridle system attaches the energy generating system to the ground station. It is likely that the structure of this, 28m span,...