Lumped Element Multibody Modeling Approach for Very Flexible Aircraft

Resumo

This paper presents a modeling approach using lumped element multibody systems to describe aeroe-
lastic dynamics of aircraft. The model is shown to describe geometric nonlinearities arising from large structural

displacements and oscillations such as that of a very flexible wing bending under aerodynamic loads. The pre-
sented approach is applied to a Goland’s wing to determine the flutter speed resulting from coupling the multibody

structure to a quasi-steady aerodynamic model. Flutter velocities are comparable to those obtained using modal
representations for structural dynamics. Finally, the modeling appoach is shown to be scalable, parametrized and
modular, all of which could make it valuable in iterative environments such as during conceptual design phases of
very flexible aircraft.