Abstract
Aviation organizations around the world are developing deployable wings. The wing is composed of some bodies connected by hinge joints with actuators, and thus it can be transformed in the span direction during the flight. Aeroelastic analysis using structural and aerodynamic models is important for the design of the deployable wing. The aeroelastic analysis takes a long calculation time because the structural deformation and unsteady aerodynamic force must be calculated at the same time. This study presents a deployable wing structural model based on multibody dynamics and absolute nodal coordinate formulation for the aeroelastic analysis. To reduce the calculation time, we propose a reduced order structural model of the deployable wing. The reduced order model provides the 18% reduction of the calculation time compared to the full model within 1% error. Additionally, we propose the method of the flutter speed determination in the time-domain using the reduced order structural model. The method can reflect the nonlinearity caused by the mixed motion between the elastic deformation and the rigid body rotation around the hinge joint in the flutter speed determination. In the method, the total energy of the wing is utilized as an index to determine the flutter speed. As a result, we can evaluate all deformations related to the flutter by using one scalar.
