A new approach for aeroelastic robust stability analysis

Air vehicles undergo variations in structural mass and stiffness because of fuel consumption and the failure of structural components, which might lead to serious influences on the aeroelastic characteristics. An approach for aeroelastic robust stability analysis taking into account the perturbations of structural mass and stiffness is developed. Applying the perturbation method and harmonic unsteady aerodynamic forces, the frequency-domain linear fractal transformation (LFT) representation of perturbed aeroelastic system is modeled. Then, the robust stability is analyzed by using the structured singular value μ-method. The numerical results of a bi-spar wing show its effectiveness and low computational time in dealing with the robust problems with mass and stiffness perturbations. In engineering analysis for solving aeroelastic problems, the robust approach can be applied to flutter analysis for airplane with the fuel load variation and taking the damage conditions into consideration.