Static aeroelastic rolling of a highly flexible wing: Pazy wing with aileron

Abstract

There is an increasing trend towards the use of higher aspect-ratio wings on commercial transport aircraft over the years. The well-known effect of slender wings on reducing fuel consumption are leading wing designs to higher aspect ratios and higher flexibility. There are many studies about the effects of geometric nonlinearities on aeroelastic behavior of high aspect-ratio, very flexible, wings. However, geometric nonlinearities may also significantly impact wings' aeroelastic behavior under nonsymmetrical conditions, specially when ailerons are deflected. Within this context, this work presents a static Fluid-Structure Interaction approach to evaluate the rolling characteristics of very flexible wings. First a modified version of the very flexible Pazy Wing, from Aeroelastic Prediction Workshop (AEPW-3), is proposed, now equipped with ailerons. Then, this work proposes a new framework to consider the geometric nonlinearity in a fluid-structure interaction, it loosely couples Full Potential aerodynamic solver with Implicit Nonlinear structural solver. The presented method was applied considering both linear and nonlinear structural analyses, with multiple aileron deflection angles. The results show that considering or neglecting geometric nonlinearities leads to qualitatively divergent predictions.