Aeroelastic Concepts for Flexible Wing Structures

This thesis summarizes investigations performed within design, analysis and experimental evaluation of flexible aircraft structures. Not only the problems, but rather the opportunities related to aeroelasticity are discussed. In the first part of the thesis, different concepts for using active aeroelastic configurations to increase aircraft performance are considered. In particular, one study deals with the minimization of the induced drag of a highly flexible wing by using multiple control surfaces. Another study deals with a possible implementation of a high-bandwidth piezo electric actuator for control applications using aeroelastic amplification. The second part of the thesis deals with the development of an approach for modeling and analysis of flexible structures considering uncertainties in analysis models. Especially in cases of large structural variations, such as fuel level variations, a fixed-base modal formulation in robust flutter analysis may lead to incorrect results. Besides a discussion about this issue, possible means of treating this problem are presented.QC 2010113