Publication Date:
2019-07-13
Description:
In this paper, optimum wing bending and torsion deformations are explored for a mission adaptive, highly flexible morphing aircraft. The complete highly flexible aircraft is modeled using a strain-based geometrically nonlinear beam formulation, coupled with unsteady aerodynamics and six-degrees-of-freedom rigid-body motions. Since there are no conventional discrete control surfaces for trimming the flexible aircraft, the design space for searching the optimum wing geometries is enlarged. To achieve high performance flight, the wing geometry is best tailored according to the specific flight mission needs. In this study, the steady level flight and the coordinated turn flight are considered, and the optimum wing deformations with the minimum drag at these flight conditions are searched by utilizing a modal-based optimization procedure, subject to the trim and other constraints. The numerical study verifies the feasibility of the modal-based optimization approach, and shows the resulting optimum wing configuration and its sensitivity under different flight profiles.
Keywords:
Numerical Analysis; Aircraft Design, Testing and Performance; Structural Mechanics
Type:
ARC-E-DAA-TN28880
,
Journal of Aircraft (ISSN 0021-8669) (e-ISSN 1533-3868); 53; 5; 1305-1316
Format:
application/pdf
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