AEROELASTIC OPTIMISATION OF A CANTILEVERED PLATE WITH LOCAL DAMPING APPLICATION

This paper aims to optimise the aeroelastic performance of a cantilevered plate through the application of a local damping distribution. An aeroelastic model was built in MSC Nastran 2018 using the finite element method and double lattice method for the structural and aerodynamic modelling of the cantilevered plate, respectively. For the aeroelastic flutter analyses, the number of structural and aero elements was determined based on the convergence study results. Stiffness proportional damping was employed to numerically model local damping as viscous, which allows both time and frequency domain simulations. Initially, case study analyses for structural and aeroelastic responses on the cantilevered plate model were conducted to find the sensitive local damping locations. It has been shown that maximum modal damping can be achieved by applying local damping at the maximum strain energy regions. Then, a genetic algorithm optimisation was employed to determine the optimised local damping application region for maximizing the flutter speed. It has been found that flutter speeds can be significantly shifted with the addition of local damping and higher modal damping can be achieved at maximum modal strain energy regions in aeroelastic flutter modes. This study highlights the potential usage of local damping in the structural design of wings and suggests a pathway toward practical passive local damping distribution.