Aerodynamic characteristic analysis of high-aspect ratio elastic wing

The aerodynamic performance and flying safety of long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are largely affected by the aeroelastic distortion of its high-aspect ratio wing. High-aspect ratio wing of UAV is bended and twisted by the air load during flight and couldn't be treated as a traditional rigid wing. The effect of static aeroelastic distortion to the aerodynamic characteristic for a real high-aspect ratio sweepforward wing of composite material under different load statuses was analyzed. The integrated design method combined aerodynamic with structural was adopted in this analysis using associated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program FLUENT and computational structural dynamics (CSD) program NASTRAN. The result shows a lift-drag ratio drop and a remarkable increase on rolling and yawing moments which affect the portrait and lateral aerodynamic performance of UAV negatively. The result also shows that the CFD/CSD coupling computational methodology is reliable to be used aerodynamic-structural integrated design of elastic wing.