Flapping wing aeroelasticity using corotational fem and 3D panel method

Aeroelasticity of flexible flapping wings is a key aspect of the design process of a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV). In this paper a new, fast aeroelastic solver for the preliminary design of flapping wings is introduced. It is based on the coupling of a free–wake direct BEM aerodynamic solver, for the analysis of thick bodies in arbitrary motion, with a nonlinear FEM structural solver based on a corotational formulation, suitable for the analysis of structures subject to large displacements. A partitioned domain coupling strategy is employed, and a Newmark-β scheme is used for the time integration. Numerical results are aimed at verifying both the aerodynamic and aeroelastic solver, and examine the sensitivity of the predictions on the aerodynamic model used.

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