Experimental And Numerical Activities For Aeroelastic Analysis Of An Aluminum Wing

ifasd2024 Tracking Number 225

In the aerospace field, comprehensive monitoring of systems structural behavior is imperative for enhancing structural safety, optimizing maintenance protocols, and predicting remaining useful life. New significant challenges have been raised in recent years by market innovations such as the use of composite materials and high aspect ratio geometries. These solutions generate light-weight components featuring larger deformations with increasing fluid loading. To deal with these features, this work pursues the long-term goal of establishing a validated procedure that combines the use of different methodologies for Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) problems. A multi-physics environment, including experimental and numerical analyses, is constructed to allow for FSI analysis. The case study presented in this work concerns wind tunnel testing of an aluminium wing featuring a NACA 0018 profile. An extensive test campaign has been conducted on such specimen in the wind tunnel of the University of Twente. During the measurements, the wing has been tested in a clamped-free configuration under different flow velocities and angles of attack (AoA). The unit under test has been instrumented with different measurement systems such as: i) strain gauges for measuring the structural deformation of the wing under wind loading, ii) pressure ports for gaining knowledge of the pressure value around the wing airfoil, iii) speckle pattern for Digital Image Correlation (DIC). Two 2 MPx high-speed cameras running at 800 fps have been used to measure the full-field displacements over the structure during wind excitation. The retrieved displacements have been compared to virtual sensing estimated displacements for validation purposes. A Finite Element Model (FEM) has been built in Simcenter 3D for numerical identification of the wing dynamic properties. The FEM has been validated and updated to match the experimental modal parameters identified via Experimental Modal Analysis (EMA) during an impact test conducted prior to wind tunnel testing. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis has been conducted in Simcenter STAR CCM+ and validated via experimental pressure values. This work further combines the validated structural and aerodynamic models into a comprehensive FSI framework for aeroelastic analysis.