22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-1.4.5

INFLUENCE OF AEROELASTIC EFFECTS ON PRELIMINARY AIRCRAFT DESIGN

C. M. Oesterheld, W. Heinze, P. Horst
TU Braunschweig, Germany

Keywords: preliminary aircraft design, mdo, aeroelasticity, finite element method, panel method

With the increasing size of modern, conventional transport aircraft aeroelastic effects have become more important for the development of new safe and competitive aircraft. This was the motivation to improve the modelling and analysis capabilities of the in-house aircraft design tool of the Institut fuer Flugzeugbau und Leichtbau (IFL) to take into account the major aeroelastic effect as early as possible in the conceptual and preliminary design phase. Main emphasis was put on the development and implementation of advanced modelling capabilities and analysis methods for both structures and aerodynamics in the integrated Preliminary Aircraft Design and Optimisation Program (PrADO). The finite-element method was chosen for static and dynamic structural analyses. A similar level of accuracy in aerodynamic analysis is achieved by the implementation of the panel method HISSS. All the structural weight estimation and flight simulation routines are based on the results of these advanced analysis tools. Elastic deflections can easily be taken into account in both, the loads and the aerodynamic properties in terms of drag vs. lift. In this paper the methods used and the modelling and analysis capabilities of this newly developed Structural and Aeroelastic Analysis Module (SAM) of PrADO are described.

view full paper