Aeroelastic tailoring of flexible composite aircraft

This paper presents a unified framework for aeroelastic tailoring of fully-flexible free-flying composite aircraft. A continuous-time state-space model is used to describe the flow. The 3D composite wing structure is condensed into a Timoshenko beam model utiliz-ing a cross-sectional modeler. The aerodynamic and structural models are tightly coupled with the longitudinal flight dynamic equations of motion in the state-space formulation. This pa-per refers to the clamped-wing aeroelastic tailoring as classic aeroelastic tailoring. Hence, the term aeroelastic tailoring will point at the novel approach that models the flexible, free-flying composite aircraft. With this paper, the author investigates the effects on the tailored structural design in terms of optimum mass and stiffness distribution due to the flexibility of the composite aircraft.