High performance finite element analysis of composite aeroelastic structures

Abstract

A high performance finite element analysis software tool has been developed for high fidelity deformation analysis of aeroelastic tailored wings and blades made of anisotropic composite materials. The package comprises an in-line semiautomatic adaptive mesh generator and a finite element solver. An aerodynamic solver can be plugged into the package to perform a coupled aero-structure analysis. The finite element solver employs a natural-mode triangular shell element, yielding accurate results with high convergence rate in deformation analysis of thin and moderately thick composite shell structures. In mesh generation, the aerodynamic and structural characteristics of the aeroelastic structure directly influence the domain discretization procedure. It has been shown that a mesh generated based on this algorithm has significant effect on improving the convergence rate of results.