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Aerospace
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Smart Wing Aircraft
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Smart Wing Aircraft

A special issue of Aerospace (ISSN 2226-4310). This special issue belongs to the section "Aeronautics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2022) | Viewed by 19835

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Wolf-Reiner Krüger

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Aeroelasticity, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Loads Analysis and Design, Bunsenstr. 10, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Interests: aircraft design; aeroelasticity; aircraft loads analysis; multibody dynamics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleaugues,

Smart Wings are seen as a key factor to improve aircraft performance, increase passenger comfort beyond the state-of-the-art. As today’s transport aircraft have unquestionably reached a high level of quality, a combination of innovative techniques is required to obtain that ambitious goal. Various approaches for flow control promise a reduction of induced drag, e.g. by cruise-point dependent adaptation of the lift distribution, and of friction drag, e.g. by laminar flow. Passive load control methods like aeroelastic tailoring, and active load control techniques, in combination with new sensors like LIDAR systems or sensor networks, will help to reduce structural wing mass. New aircraft and wing design processes will capture the potential of the technologies for performance increase and load reduction, and will assess the impact on drag, aircraft mass and thus fuel burn reduction. Promising technologies will be tested in wind tunnel experiments, in UAV and full aircraft scale, making use of innovative sensing and data acquisition techniques.

The MDPI special issue will collect papers on the topic of Smart Wing Aircraft from those fields mentioned.

Prof. Dr. Wolf-Reiner Krüger
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Aerospace is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • design processes for smart wings
  • smart wing technologies for performance improvement
  • active and passive technologies for load alleviation
  • experimental testing and validation of smart wing technologies

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 6053 KiB  
Article
Application of Aeroelastic Tailoring for Load Alleviation on a Flying Demonstrator Wing
by Wolf R. Krüger, Yasser M. Meddaikar, Johannes K. S. Dillinger, Jurij Sodja and Roeland De Breuker
Aerospace 2022, 9(10), 535; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9100535 - 21 Sep 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1901
Abstract
This article presents the application of aeroelastic tailoring in the design of wings for a flying demonstrator, as well as the validation of the design methodology with flight test results. The investigations were performed in the FLEXOP project (Flutter Free Flight Envelope Expansion [...] Read more.
This article presents the application of aeroelastic tailoring in the design of wings for a flying demonstrator, as well as the validation of the design methodology with flight test results. The investigations were performed in the FLEXOP project (Flutter Free Flight Envelope Expansion for Economical Performance Improvement), funded under the Horizon 2020 framework. This project aimed at the validation of methods and tools for active flutter control, as well as at the demonstration of the potential of passive load alleviation through composite tailoring. The technologies were to be demonstrated by the design, manufacturing and flight testing of an unmanned aerial vehicle of approximately 7 m wingspan. This article addresses the work towards the load alleviation goals. The design of the primary load-carrying wing-box in this task is performed using a joint DLR–TU Delft optimization strategy. Two sets of wings are designed in order to demonstrate the potential benefits of aeroelastic tailoring—first, a reference wing in which the laminates of the wing-box members are restricted to balanced and symmetric laminates; second, a tailored wing in which the laminates are allowed to be unbalanced, hence allowing for the shear–extension and bending–torsion couplings essential for aeroelastic tailoring. Both designs are numerically optimized, then manufactured and extensively tested to validate and improve the simulation models corresponding to the wing designs. Flight tests are performed, the results of which form the basis for the validation of the applied aeroelastic tailoring approach presented in the article. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Wing Aircraft)
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33 pages, 15351 KiB  
Article
Potential Estimation of Load Alleviation and Future Technologies in Reducing Aircraft Structural Mass
by Vega Handojo, Jan Himisch, Kjell Bramsiepe, Wolf Reiner Krüger and Lorenz Tichy
Aerospace 2022, 9(8), 412; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9080412 - 29 Jul 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2668
Abstract
In recent years, load alleviation technologies have been more widely used in transport aircraft. For aircraft already in service, load alleviation can contribute in extending the fatigue life, or enable small configurational changes. If load alleviation is considered in the aircraft design process, [...] Read more.
In recent years, load alleviation technologies have been more widely used in transport aircraft. For aircraft already in service, load alleviation can contribute in extending the fatigue life, or enable small configurational changes. If load alleviation is considered in the aircraft design process, the structural mass of the aircraft can be reduced. This paper investigates various maneuver and gust load alleviation algorithms as well as potential future technologies regarding flight operation, turbulence forecast and material science, and it evaluates the mass reduction that can be achieved. In doing so, a long-range transport aircraft was taken as the reference, and the considered load case conditions were 1-cos gusts, maneuvers and quasi-steady landing. Based upon the loads, the composite structure of the lifting surfaces was optimized, while the secondary masses as well as the wing planform were kept unchanged. With all technologies implemented, a reduction of the wing box mass by 26.5% or 4.4% of the operating empty mass could be achieved. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Wing Aircraft)
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16 pages, 2833 KiB  
Article
Aeroelastic Tailoring of the Next Generation Civil Tiltrotor Technological Demonstrator Composite Wing
by Aniello Daniele Marano, Marika Belardo, Jacopo Beretta, Filomena Starace, Salvatore Orlando, Claudio Punzi, Raffaele Frajese, Nicola Paletta and Luigi Di Palma
Aerospace 2022, 9(7), 335; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9070335 - 23 Jun 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2509
Abstract
The tiltrotor wing structure is one of the most critical and heavily investigated structures in design due to the fundamental need to consider the interactions between the wing, pylon, and rotor systems to achieve aircraft aeroelastic stability. Indeed, in high-speed forward flight, wing [...] Read more.
The tiltrotor wing structure is one of the most critical and heavily investigated structures in design due to the fundamental need to consider the interactions between the wing, pylon, and rotor systems to achieve aircraft aeroelastic stability. Indeed, in high-speed forward flight, wing flexural and torsional stiffness have fundamental roles in pitch-whirl stability. Another specific concern of tiltrotors is dynamic mode placement; it is necessary to properly place wing bending modes away from prop-rotor forcing frequencies. The main aeroelastic stability and dynamics requirements and the wing design process flow for the next generation civil tiltrotor are presented in this work. In this context, the use of composite materials plays a fundamental role in the attempt to satisfy the requirements, with the perpetual aim of minimizing the structural weight. An overview of the idealized and adopted models for strength, aeroelasticity, and whirl flutter analysis is provided. The primary focus was on the aeroelastic tailoring process. To satisfy, at the same time, all of the structural dynamic and aeroelastic stability requirements, the best compromise, with an acceptable weight penalty, was the mixture of two methodological solutions: adding unidirectional tape in the zones of the upper and lower skins for flexural out-of-plane frequency and adding a proper number of ±45° fabric layers at the locations of the skin with the highest value of strain energy for in-plane torsional modes. The results show that the proposed method based on modal strain energy analysis enables a tiltrotor aeroelastic tailored wing design. It can be easily employed in similar applications (e.g., vehicle scale-up/down) with the advantage of using the stiffness requirements derived directly from the aeroelastic ones (i.e., structural frequencies). The specific wing achieved aeroelastic clearance by adding only 2.7% of extra mass. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Wing Aircraft)
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18 pages, 8240 KiB  
Article
Unsteady Simulation of Transonic Buffet of a Supercritical Airfoil with Shock Control Bump
by Yufei Zhang, Pu Yang, Runze Li and Haixin Chen
Aerospace 2021, 8(8), 203; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace8080203 - 26 Jul 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3250
Abstract
The unsteady flow characteristics of a supercritical OAT15A airfoil with a shock control bump were numerically studied by a wall-modeled large eddy simulation. The numerical method was first validated by the buffet and nonbuffet cases of the baseline OAT15A airfoil. Both the pressure [...] Read more.
The unsteady flow characteristics of a supercritical OAT15A airfoil with a shock control bump were numerically studied by a wall-modeled large eddy simulation. The numerical method was first validated by the buffet and nonbuffet cases of the baseline OAT15A airfoil. Both the pressure coefficient and velocity fluctuation coincided well with the experimental data. Then, four different shock control bumps were numerically tested. A bump of height h/c = 0.008 and location xB/c = 0.55 demonstrated a good buffet control effect. The lift-to-drag ratio of the buffet case was increased by 5.9%, and the root mean square of the lift coefficient fluctuation was decreased by 67.6%. Detailed time-averaged flow quantities and instantaneous flow fields were analyzed to demonstrate the flow phenomenon of the shock control bumps. The results demonstrate that an appropriate “λ” shockwave pattern caused by the bump is important for the flow control effect. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Wing Aircraft)
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22 pages, 551 KiB  
Article
Design Process and Environmental Impact of Unconventional Tail Airliners
by Alejandro Sanchez-Carmona and Cristina Cuerno-Rejado
Aerospace 2021, 8(7), 175; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace8070175 - 28 Jun 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2926
Abstract
The future of aviation depends on reducing the environmental impact of the aircraft. Unconventional configurations can be the change the industry needs to achieve that goal. Therefore, the development of a tool that allows analyzing these configurations will contribute to their being considered [...] Read more.
The future of aviation depends on reducing the environmental impact of the aircraft. Unconventional configurations can be the change the industry needs to achieve that goal. Therefore, the development of a tool that allows analyzing these configurations will contribute to their being considered more easily in future designs. This design procedure is based on an aerodynamic model and a weight methodology validated for unconventional tail designs. The load cases selected to size the structure were extracted from the certification regulations in force. In order to validate the methodology, the V-tail configuration was selected as a case study. The fuel savings reached with this tail configurations are around 0.7%, and the reduction in NOx emissions are even greater. Thus, the methodology has been validated and it can be easily adapted to other unconventional tail configurations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Wing Aircraft)
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