Aeroelastic Tailoring for Gust-Energy Extraction

AbstractFor small fixed-wing aircraft, passive forms of extracting energy from the atmosphere have been shown to have positive improvements on their flight performance. The present work demonstrates the magnitude of performance gains possible from a gust with zero net-air motion through a detailed case study of a simplified flexible sailplane wing. Trends are established for how aeroelastic tailoring may be used as a passive means of energy extraction to further improve these performance gains. An aeroelastic solver is used that combines a higher-order potential flow method with an explicit structural-dynamics model. The aerodynamic model allows for a high force resolution, specifically in induced drag, with very few elements, while the structural model provides a low-cost means of computing elastic deformations in the time domain. By changing the location and spanwise orientation of the wing’s neutral axis, improvements in the energy extracted from a sinusoidal gust, in the range of 2%–12%, were established.