Aeroelastic analysis of airfoils at proximity with structural coupling

The catastrophic nature of the flow-induced vibration, also known as flutter, is a major concern in designing flying vehicles. The growing demand for these vehicles to have an eco-friendly design with enhanced aerodynamic performance and low-operating cost have made researchers promote the development of unconventional design concepts. Such concepts are represented by multiple lifting surfaces such as box wing and tandem wing configurations. In general, these configurations consist of at least two lifting surfaces and can take different forms of arrangements with or without the interaction between them. Owing to the presence of aerodynamic interaction between lifting surfaces and, possibly, the structural interaction, the change in the dynamic behavior of the system can lead to aeroelastic instabilities. Therefore, in this study, a simplified aeroelastic model using a typical airfoil section is adopted to investigate the aeroelastic instabilities for structural coupling and aerodynamic interaction. The aerodynamic interaction between airfoils is modeled using a two-dimensional unsteady vortex lattice method. The effect of coupling stiffness and proximity of airfoils on the model aeroelastic characteristics is investigated. From the results, it is found that the lifting surfaces at proximity without structural coupling are unfavorable in the aeroelastic design. © Proceedings of 2020 International Congress on Noise Control Engineering, INTER-NOISE 2020. All rights reserved.