Black-Box Online Aerodynamic Performance Optimization for a Seamless Wing with Distributed Morphing

Optimization Framework of a Ram Air Inlet Composite Morphing Flap

The ram air inlets flaps are used in some aircraft to modulate the amount of ram<br/>air cooling the Environmental Control System. The current flap design features two metallic plates connected with a hinge. The present work studies an alternative design that replaces the metallic plates with a single composite laminate with morphing...

On-Line Black-Box Aerodynamic Performance Optimization for a Morphing Wing With Distributed Sensing and Control

Inspired by nature, smart morphing technologies enable the aircraft of tomorrow to sense their environment and adapt the shape of their wings in flight to minimize fuel consumption and emissions. A primary challenge on the road to this feature is how to use the knowledge gathered from sensory data to establish an optimal shape adaptively and...

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...

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...

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...

Dynamic aeroelastic tailoring of a strut braced wing including fatigue loads

High aspect ratio strut braced aircraft can significantly reduce the induced drag. The inherent anisotropic behaviour of the composite material along with their weight saving potential can improve the performance of the aircraft during the flight. Thus, a composite strut braced aircraft is one of the promising candidates to achieve the...

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...

Low-Fidelity 2D Isogeometric Aeroelastic Analysis and Optimization Method with Application to a Morphing Airfoil

Low-fidelity isogeometric aeroelastic analysis has not received much attention since the introduction of the isogeometric analysis (IGA) concept, while the combination of IGA and the boundary element method in the form of the potential flow theory shows great potential. This paper presents a two-dimensional low-fidelity aeroelastic analysis and...