Aeroelasticity of Nonconventional Airplane Configurations-Past and Future

Abstract

At the end of the rst century of manned, powered ight, it is worthwhile to look backward to understand how innovation in airplane design required developments in aeroelasticity and how aeroelasticity has played a role in shaping the rst 100 years of aircraft design. The insights gained will help to predict how and where aeroelasticity and aeroservoelasticity will in uence the future development of ef cient, more capable, innovative air vehicles, and de ne the needs for technology and tools to enable this future. By de nition, all new aircraft begin as unconventional to a certain extent. Designs that never see universal use remain curiosities, but still help our quest for better vehicles and guide the development of analysis, design, and testing tools. Innovative, nontraditional designs affected by aeroelastic considerations have included oblique wing aircraft, forward-swept wing aircraft, Xwings, ying wings, and large joined wings. Designs that were unusually innovative at the time of their introduction but later became widespread include the swept-back wing jet, the T-tail, and the y-by-wire control con gured vehicle. Control and exploitation of aeroelasticity depends on the continued development of new materials, new structural and aerodynamicconcepts, sensors, actuators, and active control techniques. Such developments must be accompanied by proper integrated analysis/design tools, and, most importantly, by the same human inquisitiveness and creativity that has driven aircraft design for over a century. This paper uses the history of nonconventional airplane con gurations to review some of the steps taken during the past century to establish aeroelastic effects as integrated design features that must be anticipated, controlled, and exploited. The paper goes on to discuss the potential impact of past lessons on emerging airplane con gurations currently in various stages of study and development.

Numerical Simulation Research on the Transonic Aeroelasticity of a High-Aspect-Ratio Wing

“…Besides, it also can be directly achieved by test measurements. If aerodynamic loads, engine thrust and the mass force of three directions acting on the wing structure are known, the elastic deformation displacement of structural points can be obtained based on the structural equation whose form is = CFs (2) Here, us is the deformation displacement vector of structure points, C is flexibility matrix of the structure points, and FS is mass force of aerodynamic loads, engine thrust and mass force acting on the structure points.…”

“…Although these measures can improve the aerodynamic performance and structure efficiency of large aircraft, static aeroelastic deformation of wing and other components will become more serious. Therefore, a huge number of studies have been conducted in order to predict the influence of aeroelasticity on aerodynamic performances and the structure safety of the aircraft more precisely [1][2][3][4][5].…”

Nonlinear Static Aeroelasticity of High-Aspect-Ratio-Wing Aircraft by Finite Element and Multibody Methods

“…A great deal of work has considered on the aeroelasticity of very flexible aircraft [6]. Most approaches have used nonlinear beam models coupled to aerodynamic models ranging from strip theory to unsteady vortex lattice method and CFD [7].…”

Electric Propulsion Concepts for an Inverted Joined Wing Airplane Demonstrator

“…Lastly, we propose that the application of an inverted joined wing configuration could also help in solving the problem of global buckling of the joined wing airplanes reported by several researchers [18][19][20]. The direction of critical load (lift + drag in point A of the load envelope) points upwards and forwards.…”