Low-Speed Aeroelastic Modeling of Very Flexible Slender Wings with Deformable Airfoils

A low-order aeroelastic model is introduced for very flexible high-aspect-ratio wings with adaptive airfoils. A geometrically-nonlinear beam-like model capable of capturing plate-like deformations has been coupled with a 2-D finite-state aerodynamic model with arbitrary airfoil deformations. The proposed approach results in a natural extension to the conventional way of analyzing high-aspect-ratio wings, with very little additional complexity. The control effectiveness of camber deformation is numerically investigated in some simple situations, including thin isotropic and anisotropic plates and a straight wing with a constant NACA4406 airfoil.

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