Aeroelastic Instability Analysis of Common Aerodynamic Control Surfaces

In this research, for the first time, two types of common plain and single-slotted aerodynamic control surfaces have been compared and investigated from an aeroelastic point of view. For aeroelastic modeling, geometrically exact fully intrinsic beam equations are combined with Peter’s unsteady aerodynamic model in an incompressible flow regime. In order to check the aeroelastic stability of the wing, first the resulting non-linear partial differential equations are discretized by using the central finite difference method, and then linearized about the static equilibrium. Finally by using the eigenvalue analysis of linearized equations, the stability of the system versus different parameters are evaluated. The validation of the results has been achieved through comparison with the results presented in the references. Then the effects of various important parameters such as type, location, chord size, and length of the control surface on the speed and frequency of flutter instability have been investigated for two types of common plain and single-slotted aerodynamic control surfaces for the first time. It is found that the improving trend of the single-slotted control surface is more pronounced at lower chord ratios and the location closer to the wingtip than the plain control surface. Also, the importance of paying attention to the type of control surface in aeroelastic stability became more clear.

Keywords:

High Aspect Ratio Wings , Nonlinear Analysis , Flutter Instability , Aerodynamic control surface , Unsteady Aerodynamic Model.