Aeroelastic instability of aircraft wings modelled as anisotropic composite thin-walled beams in incompressible flow

Abstract

An encompassing aeroelastic model developed toward investigating the influence of directionality property of advanced composite materials and non-classical effects such as transverse shear and warping restraint on the aeroelastic instability of composite aircraft wings is presented. Within the model developed herein, both divergence and flutter instabilities are simultaneously addressed. The aircraft wing is modelled as an anisotropic composite thin-walled beam featuring circumferentially asymmetric stiffness lay-up that generates, for the problem at hand, elastic coupling among plunging, pitching and transverse shear motions. The unsteady incompressible aerodynamics used here is based on the concept of indicial functions. Issues related to aeroelastic instability are discussed, the influence of warping restraint and transverse shear on the critical speed are evaluated, and pertinent conclusions are outlined.