Aeroelastic dynamic response of elastic aircraft with consideration of two-dimensional discrete gust excitation

Design loads generally require a one-dimensional discrete gust profile without consideration of the spanwise effect, and this profile cannot represent the true gust field exactly. For a high aspect ratio aircraft, two-dimensional gusts may cause critical load conditions, and approaches for calculating dynamic responses under two-dimensional discrete gust excitation are rarely presented. In this paper, a spanwise non-uniform vertical discrete gust field is established based on a one-dimensional ‘1-cos’ gust profile in reference to a DARPA proposal, while frequency and hybrid approaches to the dynamic response analysis of flexible aircraft under this two-dimensional gust excitation are presented. Solution techniques have been applied to a high aspect ratio aircraft to assess the different response characteristics with a comparison between one-dimensional and two-dimensional discrete gust field conditions. The results show that the two-dimensional discrete gust model produces a higher bending moment than that of the one-dimensional condition. Therefore, the critical load conditions that are derived from the two-dimensional discrete gust for high aspect ratio aircraft should be seriously considered. According to the analysis, an active control scheme to alleviate the bending loads caused by the two-dimensional gust is designed, and alleviation effects in different gust conditions are compared.