PRELIMINARY DESIGN AGAINST FLUTTER OF A PRANDTLPLANE LIFTING SYSTEM.

In the report “A Vision for 2020 " [4], a panel of experts from the European Commission set up a list of challenges for aircraft industry to meet at the horizon 2020. Future aviation will need to respond to restrictive imperatives in terms of costs, environment, safety and security. At the advent of commercial aviation, the aim was to fly faster and higher than ever now the focus is put on flying with reduced impact on environment and on community, all these with lower costs, improved safety and higher efficiency. The future commercial success will strongly depend on the improvement of aerodynamic design against drag. Due to limitations of conventional designs, new concepts are needed for future aviation to meet the severe requirements imposed by the Vision 2020 report. A new concept is currently developed at Pisa University (Italy), named PrandtlPlane in honour of Ludwig Prandtl. The PrandtlPlane configuration, even though proposed in the 90s, conforms to the “Vision 2020 ” requirements. This concept is based on the “Best Wing System ” found by Prandtl in 1924, the most efficient lifting system with respect to induced drag. The benefits of this configuration are a more efficient aerodynamics, an innovative pitch control, a high efficiency of the operations of embarking and disembarking cargo, easy engine integration (several options are possible, as the one adopted by Bauhaus Luftfahrt [6] shown in Fig. 1