Ryan C. Kitson, Carlos E. S. Cesnik
DOI Number: N/A
Conference number: IFASD-2015-005
Future transportation aircraft requirements focused on energy efficiency and environmental impact are leading to design concepts with very high-aspect-ratio wings. These slender wings aim to maximize efficiency by reducing drag and lowering structural weight. The corresponding wing structures have larger structural deformations under aerodynamic loading and tighter coupling between the aeroelastic response and flight dynamics of the vehicle. Current engineering practice is to use linearized models for preliminary design of flight control and gust alleviation systems, but these models may not be able to capture nonlinearities in the vehicle response. The coupled aeroelastic and flight dynamic response of two aircraft designs were investigated to better understand the nonlinear aeroelastic implications of these future design trends. This paper reports the responses of two future configurations to control inputs and compares the results to linearized models. The linearized models are able to capture the structural and flight dynamic responses for moderate maneuvers and perturbations, but they show significant error for more aggressive maneuvers within the expected operating range.