Coupled Nonlinear Flight Dynamics/Aeroelasticity of Very Flexible UAV's (P.I.: C.E.S. Cesnik)

The mission profile of high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) UAVs requires new structural design paradigms to achieve effective weight and corresponding vehicle performance. Taking advantage of the flexibility of lifting surfaces instead of fighting it, our research has been uncovering fundamental nonlinear mechanisms that couple aeroservoelasticity and flight dynamics. Our work has been focusing on two main projects: (i) Assessment of the impact of dynamic nonlinearities on a representative USAF Sensorcraft configuration, and (ii) development of control solutions for the nonlinear coupled flight dynamics/aeroelastic characteristics of very flexible high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) aircraft. The goals of our study are to:

• Understand the response of very flexible aircraft during normal and unusual flight conditions
• Explore different mechanisms for vehicle aeroelastic control

We will achieve those goals by:

• Developing aeroelastic formulations at different complexity levels:
  • Usable for preliminary vehicle and control design studies or more detailed analysis;
  • Able to simulate 6DoF with fully flexible vehicle;
• Numerically investigating aeroelastic response under nonlinear effects for different vehicle configurations;
• Experimentally creating simple wind tunnel models to support the validation of the fully coupled computational analysis.

UM/NAST (Nonlinear Aeroelastic Simulation Toolbox)