Viability, design and implementation and business plan of a regional airport in Europe

Abstract

Aircraft wings are the responsible for planes to fly, they are the main structures providing lift so that the gravity is overcome. Therefore, one must ensure that instabilities do not appear because they can lead to fatal outcomes. Flutter is the most common instability that aircraft face, being of utmost importance to delay or eliminate its appearance. This work aims to create a MATLAB computational aeroelastic code that allows to couple the finite element structural development to an aerodynamic vortex method so to run a dynamic modal analysis which computes the flutter velocity of a parametrized wing. First, the wing geometry and parameters that affect its performance are defined, being the taper ratio, the sweep angle, the span, root and tip chord dimensions and a point mass simulating, for example, the engine. Then, the structural and aerodynamic coupling formulation and computational development are presented and, finally, the results of the parametric study are analyzed. Flutter can occur basically for bending and twisting motions and the results show clearly how important it is to distribute the inertia of a wing when computing the flutter speed, apart from making it have the most stiffness possible without adding much weight to the structure.