Research on Flutter Characteristics and Stiffness Design for 15 Meters Span Wing of a Solar-powered Aircraft

Abstract

Flutter widely happens on solar-powered aircraft due to the slight stiffness and large deformation, so that it is significant to establish the dynamic model of solar-powered aircraft and analyze the flutter characteristics.Firstly, an initial dynamic model of a 15 meters span solar-powered aircraft is build, the reverse modeling is implemented by optimize the model stiffness according to the objective flutter speed.Then the flutter analysis is carried out and a complete method for flutter analysis of solar-powered aircraft is developed.Results show that the flutter speed will increase by 29% as the wing torsional stiffness increases by 70%.The present method can be used for wing structure design of the 15 meters span solar-powered aircraft.

Keywords

• solar-powered aircraft
• flutter
• model
• wing
• stiffness