Industrial Application of Robust Aeroelastic Analysis

Abstract

EROELASTIC analysis and flight flutter testing (FFT) are central and important topics in aircraft airworthiness assessment. Confident results from numerical analysis are necessary in order to obtain an efficient and reliable flutter clearance process. There are, however, numerous sources of model uncertainties involvedinaeroelasticanalysis.Theaerodynamicsareoftenclaimed to be the most dominant source, but structural uncertainties in terms of variations in mass and stiffness properties may sometimes also be significant; see Pettit [1]. Considering FFT, this is an expensive activity that could be associated with high risk. Here as well, a systematic and reliable experimental procedure is required to obtain confident experimental data in a safe yet efficient manner. The number of gathered data points from fight testing is usually very limited. This fact often makes robust analysis methods based on statistics less usable in practice.