Abstract
The paper presents results of aeroelastic analysis on a swept flying wing aircraft developed under contract for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) SensorCraft program. This configuration is characterized by a high aspect ratio, very flexible wing with 30 sweep. This configuration, like other examples of flexible flying wings, is prone to body freedom flutter (BFF) that results from coupling of the rigid body short period mode with wing bending. A NASTRAN finite element model (FEM) is used for an initial aeroelastic flutter analysis. Stiffness and mass properties are derived from the FEM to construct an approximate beam model of the wing for ASWING aero-structural analysis. Flutter analysis for the open loop aircraft explores trades in wing stiffness, altitude and center-ofgravity (CG) location to determine whether passive means can increase flutter speed to acceptable levels. A similar flutter analysis is performed with the addition of a closed loop pitch axis autopilot to stabilize the aircraft over a wider range of static margin. Initial results indicate that BFF is an issue over lower altitude portions of the flight envelope and that active flutter suppression systems should be explored for future work.
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