FLUTTER ANALYSIS OF THE AIRCRAFT WING

a project report Submitted by

PARAMASIVAM SURESH(UR13AE044)
in partial fulfillment for the award of the degree of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
in

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING
under the supervision of

Mr. A. DANIEL ANTONY, M.E

DEPARTMENT OF AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

KARUNYA UNIVERSITY
(Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences)
(Declared as Deemed-to-be-under Sec-3 of the UGC Act, 1956)

Karunya Nagar, Coimbatore - 641114.INDIA

APRIL 2017

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 BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE

Certified that the project report “FLUTTER ANALYSIS OF THE AIRCRAFT

WING” is the bonafide work of “PARAMASIVAM SURESH(UR13AE044)”
who carried out the project work under my supervision during the academic year
2016-2017.

SIGNATURE SIGNATURE

Dr. P.D. Arumairaj Mr. A. Daniel Antony

Professor Assistant Professor
Head of Department Dept. of Aerospace Engineering
Dept. of Civil and Mechanical Engineering School of Mechanical Sciences
School of Mechanical Sciences

Submitted for the full Semester Viva Voce held on

Internal Examiner External Examiner

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, we praise and thank ALMIGHTY GOD whose

blessings have bestowed in me the will power and confidence to carry out my
project.

I am grateful to our beloved founders (Late). Dr. D.G.S. Dhinakaran,

C.A.I.I.B, Ph.D., and Dr. Paul Dhinakaran, M.B.A, Ph.D., for their love and
always remembering us in their prayers.

I extend my thanks to our Vice Chancellor Dr.S. Sundar Manoharan,

Ph.D., and our Registrar Dr. C. Joseph Kennady, Ph.D., for giving me this
opportunity to do the project.

I also extend my thanks to Dr. P.D. Arumairaj, M.E., PhD., Professor

and Head of the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering for his
encouragement.

I feel it a pleasure to be indebted to my guide, Mr. A. Daniel Antony,

M.E, Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering for his
valuable support, advice and encouragement.

I also thank Dr. Pradeep Kumar, M.Tech., PhD., Professor,

Department of Aerospace Engineering for his valuable help rendered to
complete my project.

Last but not the least I thank my parents and friends for their support and
encouragement in completing my project work.

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 ABSTRACT

Flutter is an unstable oscillation which can lead to destruction. Flutter can occur on
fixed surfaces, such as wing, blades, or the stabilizer. By self-excited aero-elastic
instability, flutter can lead to mechanical or structural failure of aircraft wing. The
modern Aircrafts have been designed with increased pressure ratio and reduced weight
to improve aerodynamic efficiency, resulting in severe aero-elastic problems.
Particularly flutter in wing at high subsonic flow can be characterized by several
aerodynamic nonlinear effects such as Pitching & Heaving, and tip vortex instability.
Fluid and Structure are two different domains which will be coupled by full system
coupling technique to predict the fluttering effect in wing. MATLAB is a commercial
Numerical simulation tool, which will be deployed in this work to perform the
frequency and damping ratio variation of Pitching and Heaving motion of the through
Eigenvalue method. Effect of mass axis and flexural axis on Flutter Speed is done. Used
the Fluid-Structure Interaction in ANSYS to find the frequency of a wing

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 Table of content
Bonafide certificate ii
Acknowledgement iii
Abstract iv
Table of contents v
List of tables vi
List of figures viii
List of symbols and abbreviations ix

1. Introduction 1
1.1 Dynamic Aero-elasticity 2
1.2 Objective 3
1.3 Methodology 3
1.4 Literature Study 3
2. Mathematical Formulation of Dynamic Aero-Elastic System 6
2.1 Aero-elastic analysis of a typical section 6
2.2 Aero-elastic behaviour of a Flexible Wing 12
3. Numerical Simulation 14
3.1 MATLAB 14
3.2 Methods to solve the Governing Equation 14
i. K – Method 14
ii. P-k Method 15
iii. Eigenvalue Method 15
3.3 NACA Airfoil 17
3.3.1 NACA – 23015 17
3.4 Results through Eigenvalue method. 19
3.5 Zero damping and structural damping 21
3.6 Effect of Changes in position of the Flexural and Mass Axes 23
3.7 Flutter Speed Prediction for Binary Systems 25

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4. Computational Analysis of Wing 28
4.1 Introduction 28
4.2 Solidworks 29
4.2.1 Importing Airfoil Coordinates 29
4.2.2 Geometry Generation 30
4.3 ANSYS Workbench 30
4.3.1 Importing IGES File 31
4.4 Meshing 32
4.5 Solution setup: Fluent 35
4.5.1 Fluid Properties 36
4.5.2 Model Used 36
4.5.3 Boundary Conditions 36
4.5.4 Results from Fluent 37
4.6 Static Structural 37
4.6.1 Mesh model of the wing 38
4.6.2 Solution setup for Static structural 39
4.6.3 Results from Static Structural 39
4.7 Modal Analysis 40
4.7.1 Solution setup for Modal 40
4.7.2 Results from Modal 40
Conclusion 41
Reference 42
Appendix 43

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 List of Tables

Table: 3.1 Baseline parameters for the binary flutter model 18

Table: 4.1 Mesh Properties 33
Table: 4.2 Boundary Conditions 36
Table: 4.3 Specifications of Solidworks wing model 37

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 List of Figures

Fig: 1.1 Schematic of the field of Aero-elasticity. 1

Fig: 2.1 Schematic showing of the wing section with pitch 6
and plunge spring restraints.
Fig: 2.2 Two-dimensional aerofoil. 9
Fig: 2.3 Binary aero-elastic model. 10
Fig: 3.1 NACA AIRFOIL 23015. 17
Fig 3.2 Air Speed(m/s) Vs Frequency(Hz) and Damping ratio (%) for rigid wing. 19
Fig 3.3 Air Speed(m/s) Vs Frequency(Hz) and Damping ratio (%) for flexible wing.20
Fig 3.4: Air speed(m/s) Vs Frequency(Hz) and Damping ratio (%) for rigid 21
wing zero damping.
Fig 3.5: Air speed(m/s) Vs Frequency(Hz) and Damping ratio (%) for flexible 22
wing zero damping.
Fig 3.6: Effect of mass axes position on flutter speed. 24
Fig 3.7: Effect of flexural axis position on flutter speed. 24
Fig 4.1 Flow Chart of the FSI Analysis. 29
Fig: 4.2 Importing Airfoil coordinates as a curve. 29
Fig: 4.3 Geometry for analysis. 30
Fig: 4.4 The IGES file imported in ANSYS Workbench. 31
Fig: 4.5 The IGES file with Enclosure. 32
Fig: 4.6 Creating Named selections for the mesh. 33
Fig: 4.7 Mesh generated. 34
Fig: 4.8 Close view of WING Mesh generated. 35
Fig 4.9 Contours of Pressure for the wing. 37
Fig: 4.10 Mesh model of the wing in Static structural. 38
Fig 4.11 Fixed support in Wing. 38
Fig 4.12 Imported Pressure from Fluent. 39
Fig: 4.13 Total Deformation of the Wing. 40
Fig 4.14 Total Deformation of the Wing. 40

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 List of Symbols and Abbreviations

NACA - National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

FSI - Fluid-Structure Interaction
L - Lift (N)
M - Pitching moment (N-m)
ρ - Density (Kg/m3)
V - Airspeed (m/s)
s - Semi-Span (m)
h - Linear displacement (m)
θ - Angular displacement (m)
c - Chord (m)
aw - Lift curve slope
𝑀𝜃̇ - Unsteady Aerodamping derivative
m - mass/Unit Area (Kg/m2)
MZ, LZ - Non-dimensional numbers
Kh - Flap Stiffness (Nm/rad)
Kθ - Pitch Stiffness (Nm/rad)
ξ - Damping Ratio
wh - Flap frequency (Hz)
w - Pitch frequency (Hz)
xf - Flexural axis (m)
xc - Mass axis (m)
CL - Co-efficient of Lift
CD - Co-efficient of Drag

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