High Fidelity Nonlinear Aeroelastic Analysis for Scaled Vehicle Design

A multi-national team of researchers is working to design, manufacture, and flight test a 1/9 th scale joined-wing remotely piloted aircraft. Producing specific nonlinear aeroelastic behavior is crucial to the program goals. High fidelity nonlinear aeroelastic analysis is required to verify that the scaled model will produce the desired response. This paper develops and demonstrates an aeroelastic coupling interface that loosely couples a newly developed vortex lattice code with MSC.Nastran. The nonlinear aeroelastic coupling scheme is verified against an aeroelastic code for low order beam elements. Once verified, the aeroelastic coupling scheme is applied to a high fidelity model of a joined-wing aircraft. Results show that the previous flight test vehicle is too stiff to exhibit the desired nonlinear behavior. A new more flexible model needs to be designed for the flight test program. A design optimization methodology is prototyped on a beam model which has geometry and initial stiffness that are representative of the as-built flight test model. The beam model is successfully designed to show the desired nonlinear aeroelastic response.

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