Unsteady Aerodynamics in the Gust and Manoeuvre Response of Flexible Aircraft

Aircraft wings are becoming more flexible, making it important to take this flexibility into account from the start of the design process. With flexible wings, unsteady (time-varying) aerodynamics becomes important. For this reason, an unsteady aerodynamics model was constructed and coupled to an aeroelastic flight mechanics tool. This allows...

Coupled Nonlinear Aeroelasticity and Flight Dynamics for Stability Analysis of Flexible Wing Structures

The present work thus develops a low-fidelity formulation to investigate the flight dynamic stability of a flexible wing structure. The model is verified against other studies found in the relevant literature, which show interesting trends in terms of how some of the design variables or flight conditions influence the stability of the structure.

Smart Wind Turbine: Analysis and Autonomous Flap

Wind turbines convert kinetic energy of the wind into electrical energy. Unfortunately, this process is everything but constant, as the wind source shows large fluctuations with high and low frequencies. This turbulence, together with the wind shear and yawed inflow, excites the turbine structure, thereby driving the loads and the design of...

Coupled Flight Dynamic and Unsteady Aeroservoelastic Modeling and Control of a Flexible Wing Aircraft

Recent developments in airframe design include the increasing application of modern lightweight materials. Airframe designs based on composite materials are able to provide sufficient structural strength at lower mass, but often have decreased structural rigidity. Flight vehicles with relatively flexible structures exhibit more prominent...

Multibody Dynamics Modeling of Flexible Aircraft Flight Dynamics

Because of the focus on weight minimization, aircraft are becoming more and more flexible. Therefore, the frequency separation between flight mechanics motion and structural vibration decreases. This calls for a flight mechanics model that includes aeroelasticity. The development of such a model was the subject of the current research. This...

An Integrated Approach to Aircraft Modelling and Flight Control Law Design

The design of flight control laws (FCLs) for automatic and manual (augmented) control of aircraft is a complicated task. FCLs have to fulfil large amounts of performance criteria and must work reliably in all flight conditions, for all aircraft configurations, and in adverse weather conditions. Consequently, a large part of the FCL design...

Elements of automated aeroelastic analysis in aircraft preliminary design

Aeroelastic analysis of quasi-axisymmetrical airships at low Mach number

An aeroelastic modelling of an axisymmetrical airship is discussed in this paper. The main difficulty is due to the fact that instabilities are not axisymmetrical. Furthermore an Euler-Lagrange kinematical coupling is necessary in order to represent the fluid-structure interaction. Our strategy is based on some arbitrary change of domain (for...

Physical and numerical aspects of aeroelastic simulations