Application of Aeroelastic Tailoring for Load Alleviation on a Flying Demonstrator Wing †

This article presents the application of aeroelastic tailoring in the design of wings for a flying demonstrator, as well as the validation of the design methodology with flight test results. The investigations were performed in the FLEXOP project (Flutter Free Flight Envelope Expansion for Economical Performance Improvement), funded under the...

An aeroelastic optimisation framework for manufacturable variable stiffness composite wings including critical gust loads

This work presents a new aeroelastic optimisation framework for the preliminary design of variable stiffness composite wing structures. The framework is constructed by sequentially and iteratively solving two sub-problems: aeroelastic tailoring and lay-up retrieval, using gradient-based algorithms with full-analytical sensitivities provided....

Preliminary aeroelastic design of composite wings with distributed electric propulsion

In the development of electric aircraft, the use of distributed electric propulsion introduces a potential occurrence of propeller whirl flutter, which needs to be taken into account for wing structural design. To this end, this work extends an in-house aeroelastic optimization tool by means of including a post-processing procedure on whirl...

Design and testing of aeroelastically tailored composite wing under fatigue and gust loading including effect of fatigue on aeroelastic performance

The aim of the paper is to experimentally validate a numerical design methodology for optimizing composite wings subject to gust and fatigue loading requirements and to assess the effect of fatigue on the aeroelastic performance of the wing. Traditionally, to account for fatigue in composite design, a knockdown factor on the maximum stress...

The interaction between active aeroelastic control and structural tailoring in aeroservoelastic wing design

This paper presents an analysis of the interaction and trade-off between active aeroelastic control and passive structural tailoring on a free-flying fully flexible aircraft model. Both technologies are included in the preliminary design of a typical transport aircraft configuration with a conventional control surface layout containing...

Static and dynamic aeroelastic tailoring with composite blending and manoeuvre load alleviation

In aircraft design, proper tailoring of composite anisotropic characteristics allows to achieve weight saving while maintaining good aeroelastic performance. To further improve the design, dynamic loads and manufacturing constraints should be integrated in the design process. The objective of this paper is to evaluate how the introduction of...

The effects of a full-aircraft aerodynamic model on the design of a tailored composite wing

This paper discusses the effects of the aerodynamic model on the design of a composite wing via aeroelastic tailoring. The classic framework for analysis and optimization of composite wings developed at Delft University of Technology adopts panel method aerodynamics to calculate static and dynamic loads. The current work expands the...

Aeroelastic optimization of composite wings including fatigue loading requirements

An analytical model to predict the fatigue life of a composite laminate is formulated. The model calculates stresses in each ply using classical lamination theory, degrades the residual strength using the linear wear-out law and predicts failure based on Tsai Wu failure theory. The cycles to failure are predicted using the updated cycle-by...

Preliminary aeroelastic design of composite wings subjected to critical gust loads

Including a gust analysis in an optimization framework is computationally expensive as the critical load cases are not known a priori and hence a large number of points within the flight envelope have to be analyzed. Model order reduction techniques can provide significant improvement in computational efficiency of an aeroelastic analysis. In...

Aeroelastic tailoring of flexible composite aircraft

This paper presents a unified framework for aeroelastic tailoring of fully-flexible free-flying composite aircraft. A continuous-time state-space model is used to describe the flow. The 3D composite wing structure is condensed into a Timoshenko beam model utiliz-ing a cross-sectional modeler. The aerodynamic and structural models are tightly...

FLEXOP – Application of aeroelastic tailoring to a flying demonstrator wing

This paper presents the application of aeroelastic tailoring in the design of flying demonstrator wings. The work is part of the Flutter Free Flight Envelope eXpansion (FLEXOP) project, funded under the Horizon 2020 framework. The project involves the design, manufacturing and flight-testing of a UAV toward two principle goals: i) to demonstrate...

Surrogate-based aerodynamics for composite wing box sizing

The main objective of this paper is to propose an aeroelastic optimization approach capable of performing structural sizing optimization considering structural and aerodynamic constraints. The proposed approach uses a detailed FE model of a composite wing with shell elements in order to obtain realistic weight estimation and structural...

Aeroelastic tailoring for static and dynamic loads with blending constraints

In the present paper the authors want to investigate the effect of different load configuration in order to identify the ones driving the optimization. A set of static loads, gust loads and static loads with maneuver load alleviation (MLA) are tested. Gust loads have been included in the optimization via an equivalent static load (ESL)....