This course will foster the students' interest in aeroelasticity and structural dynamics, introduce them to aeroelastic concepts such as "the flexible aircraft", provide them with a wide range of tools to model problems in aeroelasticity and discuss modern methods and challenges in this field.

2 lectures per week

Rooms where video & audio recording is possible are requested for the lectures in this course to explore the "flipped-classroom" approach and to offer this course online in the future.

None

None

35% Final Written Exam

25% Mid Term Exam - to be administered in one of the booked Lab sessions; will include the use of a computer and notes from class.

40% Project work: Analytical and numerical implementation of concepts derived in class.

The aims of this course are to:

■ foster student interest in aeroelasticity and to introduce them to aeroelastic concepts such as "the flexible aircraft" and structural dynamic/aerodynamic interaction and stability;

■ provide an understanding of complex structural dynamics and aeroelasticity by use of simple Lagrangian models of aircraft wing, fuselage, and rotor systems;

■ give the student a wide range of tools to model the structural dynamics of aircraft wings;

■ demonstrate the diverse nature of aeroelasticity problems by bringing together aspects of previous courses, such as dynamics, structures, mathematics and aerodynamics;

■ provide the student with a phenomenological understanding of aeroelastic problems such as control reversal, divergence and flutter;

■ provide an understanding of the binary flutter problem.

■ provide an introduction to modern numerical methods in structural dynamics and aeroelasticity

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ apply Lagrange's method and the principle of virtual displacement to model and analyse dynamic behaviour of flexible aircraft structures

■ apply assumed modes to generate binary and ternary structural-dynamic approximations of flexible aircraft and calculate the modes of simple aircraft models.

■ evaluate the concepts of wing elastic axis, inertial axis and aerodynamic centre, and demonstrate how the relative positioning of these axes may affect the structural-dynamic/aeroelastic stability of the wing;

■ critically analyse the concepts of aeroelastic flutter and divergence on lifting surfaces

■ Select and evaluate suitable methods, including numerical tools, for structural dynamics and aeroelastic analysis of aircraft configurations, providing justification in a technical report referencing appropriate technical literature.