Surrogate Modelling of the Steady Aeroelastic Performance of the Fish Bone Active Camber Concept

Previous work on the Fish Bone Active Camber morphing airfoil concept has shown promising performance in terms of a large lift control authority and low drag penalty. This work extends significantly the range of operating parameters considered for this concept and creates a surrogate model of the aerodynamic performance of the FishBAC, as predicted by a loosely coupled, partitioned Fluid Structure Interaction analysis. This surrogate model provides a computationally lightweight method of including the steady aeroelastic behavior and resulting aerodynamic performance of the FishBAC within analysis of fixed or rotating wing applications, and it is made freely available for download. The underlying low-fidelity Fluid Structure Interaction analysis, which builds upon previous work, is first introduced and an improved non-linear formulation of the morphing deflection is presented. The design case studied is then introduced, along with discussion of relevant operating conditions. Design studies around key parameters are shown, motivating the final configuration selected. The steady aeroelastic response of this design configuration is then predicted over a wide range of Mach numbers, angles of attack and camber deflections. A MATLAB-based, interpolating surrogate model is then generated around this data set. This analysis shows that the FishBAC provides large lift and pitching moment authority combined with high lift-to-drag ratios over a very wide range of operating conditions, and provides a low computational cost means of including the concept into blade/wing or aircraft level analysis.