Optimal Design of a Passive Gust Alleviation Device for a Flying Wing Aircraft

This paper presents an investigation into minimizing the gust response of an aircraft in flying wing configuration integrated with a passive gust alleviation device (PGAD) at the wing tip. The study was started from the aerodynamic analysis and comparison by using vortex lattice method and CFD method at specified flight cases. Composite structural design including stiffened panel buckling and stress analysis was carried out by using FE method to make sure the large sweep angle and high aspect wing structure meet the design requirements. Subsequently modal analysis and gust response of the wing to a discrete (1cos) gust load in a range of equivalent frequency were calculated. The gust response alleviation was evaluated by optimizing the key design parameters of the PGAD subject to practical design constraint. The optimized PGAD together with the wing aeroelastic effect is very effective and leads to the gust response reduction in terms of wing load and deflection by at least 17% in the most critical flight case at sea level.