Effects of Engine Location and Thrust on Aeroelastic Behaviour and Gust Response of a Flexible Bending-Torsional Wing

Abstract

Lagrange and Rayleigh-Ritz analytical techniques were used to develop a four mode aeroelastic model of a simple rectangular flexible wing with a point mass and thrust system. This model was used to investigate the effects that aero-engines location have on flutter behaviour and gust response. It was found that increasing the size of the point mass had a stabilizing effect on flutter, whereas an increase in thrust had the opposite effect. Moving the mass along the span towards the leading-edge of the wing-tip provided greatest flutter stability but the variation in flutter speed was distinctly non-linear. Conversely, the leading-edge wing-tip was seen to be the most critical position of the thrust placement. With respect to gust response, an increase of both the external mass and thrust increased the deflection of the wing when placed towards the wing-tip. However, the smaller magnitude of external mass caused the greatest total wing deflection.

Date of Award	1 Oct 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Jonathan E Cooper (Supervisor) & Andres Marcos (Supervisor)