Tow-steered Aeroelastic Tailoring for Improved Horizontal Stabiliser Performance

Aeroelastic tailoring based on tow-steered composites is applied to the structural design of a horizontal stabiliser. The lift-curve slope of the stabiliser is viewed as the primary performance measure in this work and the aim of the aeroelastic tailoring process is to increase it, with consideration to the stabiliser in a forward, zero or backward-swept configuration. The tow-steered design is compared to a structurally stiff baseline as well as an aeroelastically tailored unidirectional design. It is shown that the use of tow-steered composites can improve the lift-curve slope in all sweep configurations, as well as resulting in designs that can distribute stresses more evenly under load. Furthermore, the tow-steered design enables an additional gain of 3.8% in lift-curve slope beyond the optimal unidirectional ply design.