Development of an Aerostructural Analysis Tool for a Low-Sweep Parametric Wing

An aerostructural analysis program was developed to predict the aerodynamic performance of a non-rigid, low-sweep wing. The wing planform was geometrically defined to have a rectangular section, and a trapezoidal section. The cross-section was further set to an airfoil shape which was consistent across the entire wingspan. Furthermore, to enable the inclusion of this multidisciplinary analysis module into an optimization scheme, the wing geometry was defined by a series of parameters: root chord, taper ratio, leading-edge sweep, semi-span length, and the kink location. Aerodynamic analysis was implemented through the quasi-three-dimensional approach, including a three-dimensional inviscid solution and a sectional two-dimensional viscous solution. The inviscid analysis was provided through the implementation of the vortex ring lifting surface method, which modelled the wing about its mean camber surface. The viscous aerodynamic solution was implemented through a sectional slicing of the wing. For each section, the effective angle of attack was determined and provided as an input to a two-dimensional airfoil solver. This airfoil solution was comprised of two subcomponents: a linear-strength vortex method inviscid solution, and a direct-method viscous boundary layer computation. The converged airfoil solution was developed by adjusting the effective airfoil geometry to account for the boundary layer displacement thickness, which in itself required the inviscid tangential speeds to compute. The structural solution was implemented through classical beam theory, with a torsion and bending calculator included. The torque and bending moment distribution along the wing were computed from the lift distribution, neglecting the effects of drag, and used to compute the twist and deflection of the wing. Interdisciplinary coupling was achieved through an iterative scheme. With the developed implementation, the inviscid lift loads were used to compute the deformation of the wing. This deformation was used to update the wing mesh, and the inviscid analysis was run again. This iteration was continued until the lift variation between computations was below 0.1%. Once the solution was converged upon by the inviscid and structural solutions, the viscous calculator was run to develop the parasitic drag forces. Once computation had completed, the aerodynamic lift and drag forces were output to mark the completion of execution.