Trim angle of attack of flexible wings using non-linear aerodynamics

Multidisciplinary interactions are expected to play a significant role in the design of future high-performance aircraft (Blended-Wing Body, Truss-Braced wing; High Speed Civil transport, High-Altitude Long Endurance aircraft and future military aircraft). Also, the availability of supercomputers has made it now possible to employ high-fidelity models (Computational Fluid Dynamics for fluids and detailed finite element models for structures) at the preliminary design stage. A necessary step at that stage is to calculate the wing angle-of-attack at which the wing will generate the desired lift for the specific flight maneuver. Determination of this angle, a simple affair when the wing is rigid and the flow regime linear, becomes difficult when the wing is flexible and the flow regime non-linear. To solve this inherently nonlinear problem, a Newton's method type algorithm is developed to simultaneously calculate the deflection and the angle of attack.;The developed algorithm is tested for a wing, used for in-house aeroelasticity research at Boeing (previously McDonnell Douglas) Long Beach. The trim angle of attack is calculated for a range of desired lift values. In addition to the Newton's method algorithm, a non derivative method (NDM) based on fixed point iteration, typical of fixed angle of attack calculations in aeroelasticity, is employed. The NDM, which has been extended to be able to calculate trim angle of attack, is used for one of the cases. The Newton's method calculation converges in fewer iterations, but requires more CPU time than the NDM method. The NDM, however, results in a slightly different value of the trim angle of attack. It should be noted that NDM will converge in a larger number of iterations as the dynamic pressure increases.;For one value of the desired lift, both viscous and inviscid results were generated. The use of the inviscid flow model while not resulting in a markedly different value for the trim angle of attack, does result in a noticeable difference both in the wing deflection and the span loading when compared to the viscous results.;A crude (coarse-grain) parallel methodology was used in some of the calculations in this research. Although the codes were not parallelized, the use of modal super-position made it possible to compute the sensitivity terms on different processors of an IBM SP/2. This resulted in a decrease in wall clock time for these calculations. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).