Aeroelastic Tailoring for Gust-Energy Extraction
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 33, Issue 4
Abstract
For small fixed-wing aircraft, passive forms of extracting energy from the atmosphere have been shown to have positive improvements on their flight performance. The present work demonstrates the magnitude of performance gains possible from a gust with zero net-air motion through a detailed case study of a simplified flexible sailplane wing. Trends are established for how aeroelastic tailoring may be used as a passive means of energy extraction to further improve these performance gains. An aeroelastic solver is used that combines a higher-order potential flow method with an explicit structural-dynamics model. The aerodynamic model allows for a high force resolution, specifically in induced drag, with very few elements, while the structural model provides a low-cost means of computing elastic deformations in the time domain. By changing the location and spanwise orientation of the wing’s neutral axis, improvements in the energy extracted from a sinusoidal gust, in the range of 2%–12%, were established.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This research was made possible through the support of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant “Flight Performance Enhancements using Atmospheric Gusts and Aeroelastic Effects” (funding reference number RGPIN-2016-03920). Special thanks is also extended to Compute Canada for their computational resources.
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Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 33 • Issue 4 • July 2020
Copyright
©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 28, 2019
Accepted: Feb 24, 2020
Published online: May 11, 2020
Published in print: Jul 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Oct 11, 2020
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