Theoretical modeling and vibration analysis of composite laminated wing-box structures of hydrogen-electric aircraft under hygrothermal environment

Abstract

For the sake of achieving the goal of ultra-low or even zero carbon emissions during flight, hydrogen-electric aircraft has been receiving increasing emphasis. Nevertheless, the hydrogen-electric aircraft owns an all-composite fuselage configuration and is subjected hygrothermal environment, which have a significant effect on the aircraft dynamics, especially for wing structure. In this study, an improved orthogonal polynomial solution based on the Rayleigh-Ritz method is developed for the dynamic analysis of composite laminated wing-box structures (CLWBSs) of hydrogen-electric aircraft with humid and hot environment and elastic boundary. In this solution approach, the potential energy, kinetic energy, elastic potential energy and hygrothermal potential energy of CLWBSs are derived from the framework of Kirchhoff thin plate hypothesis. A set of artificial springs is imported to the free edges of CLWBSs to simulate the elastic boundary and connection between two plates. The convergence, accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed formulation are validated by experiment and finite element analysis. The effect of the coupling parameters and the elastic boundaries due to flexible composite fuselage in hygrothermal environment created by the hydrogen fuel cells are systematically investigated which have been confirmed by theoretical research, finite element analysis and experiment. The related findings indicate that the present approach provided an effective formulation for the vibration analysis and optimization of flexible composite wing-box structures. It can be applied in the field of aerospace and navigation industry at the same time.