Numerical Investigation into Flutter and

Flutter-Buffet Phenomena for a Swept Wing

and a Curved Planform Wing

Youssef Hamdi Ibrahim Allam

1. Introduction

Given the rapid expansion of the commercial flight market, improving the performance of transport aircraft remains
a significant challenge.
Modern technologies and new design configurations aim to increase efficiency, lowering operational costs and
pollution.
New propulsion systems have been introduced, as well as lighter, more efficient, and hybrid materials that can also
be used in the manufacture and monitoring of aircraft structures' safety.
There are also new aircraft control and guidance technologies, as well as new aircraft configurations and technical
solutions.

The use of folding wing tips allows the wing span to be increased during flight operations, reducing aerodynamic
drag.Improving both aerodynamic and structural efficiency is also a primary goal in biplane configurations or when
clean morphing wings are envisaged.

However, recent advancements in this wing shape have resulted in new areas of research that require additional
inquiry. Thus, we undertook further calculations in order to obtain a more precise computation of the aerodynamic
efficiency of the examined wings, as well as a more complete definition and understanding of the aeroelastic
instability events that occur for swept and curved wings in the transonic regime.

The first section of this study summarizes the findings of a numerical sensitivity analysis.
The aerodynamic meshes, created with commercial software, follow an organized approach.
As a result, even when wing planforms vary, the inaccuracies brought on by the numerical technique are of a similar
size. There is a description of the geometry of the investigated wings in. The models were assumed to be stiff, and
for both wings, extremely refined meshes were built and examined in the transonic regime.That is, aerodynamic
loads have no effect on the geometry of the wings.
The most realistic structured meshes include around 6,500,000 cells.

The commercial code ANSYS-Fluent was used for all of the simulations.
During the analysis, density-based and pressure-based solvers were utilized to test the numerical results. The
acquired data allow us to have a better understanding of the influence of mesh refinement on the estimated values
for lift and drag coefficients.

From an aviation engineering standpoint, the aeroelastic instability conditions result in the definition of a buffet
and/or flutter border, which constitutes a technical limitation for aircraft safety.
It is assumed in the technical literature that a high speed buffet is caused by flow separation on the wing surfaces
behind an oscillating shockwave that arises at high altitudes and Mach numbers.

Aeroelastic instabilities can be studied using mathematics and methodologies related to nonlinear dynamic
equilibrium.
The most important aerodynamic nonlinearities at high Mach numbers are shock motions and subsequent flow
separation.
Vortex shedding may characterize unsteady aerodynamics at low airspeeds, i.e., low Mach numbers, and in this case,
flutter can be driven by dynamic-stall-related nonlinearities.
A bifurcation diagram can be used to illustrate the behavior of a nonlinear system for both nonlinear static problems,
such as a postbuckling problem, and nonlinear dynamic problems, such as the identification of limit cycle
oscillations for aeroelastic problems.

When self-sustained oscillations occur, the flutter speed is attained.

A classical flutter condition can be clearly recognized due to the rapid increase in the curved-wing oscillation
amplitude by using a numerical technique based on the analysis of the dynamic response of a structure subjected to
unsteady aerodynamic loads (that is, a series of fluid structure interaction analyses performed using commercial
software).
The connection between bending and torsion is plainly visible in this situation.
In contrast, when the flutter-buffet occurs, the swept-wing oscillation amplitude increases slightly in the situations
studied.
A classical flutter mechanism occurs when at least two elastic degrees of freedom interact.
In the early stages of flutter— buffet, the work done by the aerodynamic field on the wing structure is dependent on
forces created by periodic and self-sustaining vibrations of the pressure field (buffet) stimulated by the unavoidable
disturbances that form near the wing surface.

2. CFD Results for Rigid-Wing Models

One of the benefits of the curved plan-form wing is that it reduces drag.
To demonstrate this benefit, enhanced meshes were created for the swept-wing and curved-wing models. Figures 1
and 2 show the models
of the two half wings with AR = 9 5
For swept and curved models, the blocking approach was used to create structured meshes with the same topology.
The total mesh count is 6,490,550 HEXA-8 elements and 6,570,662 nodes.

The wing models' surface meshes are made up of 44,574 QUAD-4 components and 44,699 nodes.
Figure 4 shows the surface mesh of the curved wing

Figures 5 and 6 show, as an example, the mesh layout at the tip

of the curved-wing model and at the lateral side of the
curved-wing mesh volume, respectively.
The numerical results of the CFD analyses are summarized in Table 1.
Figures 12 and 13 compare the wing polar curves and efficiencies, respectively
The curved-wing efficiency has clearly improved: for C L = 0 4, a drag reduction of around 7.7% can be derived
(Table 2), and an increase of about 8.3% can be inferred from Figure 13.
The pressure component of the drag coefficients indicates the most significant difference in transonic flow, the
wave drag of a curved planform wing is greatly reduced.

Based on the data, a preliminary estimate of the fuel consumption decrease was performed using a conventional
approach.
A simplified reference mission for a wide-body long-range aircraft was explored.

The following equation must be met for a constant-altitude flight with a constant cruising velocity:

where X is the distance traveled, W is the aircraft weight (which changes during flight), V is the aircraft velocity, c
is the specific fuel consumption, q is the dynamic pressure, S is the aircraft reference wing area, and C D is the drag
coefficient which changes according to the simplifying assumption that the airplane drag polar is only represented
by the rigid clean wing polar, it highlights that fuel consumption can be significantly reduced.
In order to perform the FSI analyses using coarser
meshes, to optimize both time and computational resources,
a sensitivity analysis was carried out by taking into account
rigid CFD results. For the swept-wing model, the analysed
meshes have 2 5 × 10 5, 4 × 10 5, 5 5 × 106, and 6 5 × 106
nodes, respectively. The results relate to an angle of attack
α = 0 76 °, M = 0 85, and h = 10,000 m (corresponding to an
expected value for the lift coefficient C L = 0 4). In the case of
the curved-wing model, the analysed meshes have 4 × 10 5
and 6 5 × 106 nodes, respectively. In this latter case, to obtain
a C L = 0 4, an angle of attack α = 1 15 ° and similar values for
Mach number and altitude were used

Figures 15 and 16 show the lift coefficient and drag coefficient of a swept wing as a function of the number of nodes
(or cells).
The appropriate coefficients for the curved wing are shown in Figures 17 and 18, respectively.
Both wall function and improved wall treatment were applied for the finest meshes.
Figures 15-18 show that the findings in terms of C L and C D are fairly close to each other.
On the basis of these results, an estimation of errors can
be made for the meshes made up of 400,000 cells taking the
meshes made up of 6,500,000 cells as a reference.
For the C L and C D of the swept-wing model, we have
(wall function method)

while for the C L and C D of the curved-wing model, we have

(wall function method):

As can be observed, the predicted errors for C L are less than 10%, however the errors for the C D coefficient are
significantly higher, at around 27%.
However, numerical mistakes that are extremely similar impact both sweeping and curved models.
Based on these findings, coupled dynamic analyses (FSI) were performed using meshes of 400,000 cells, with the
pressure distribution producing the most important component of aeroelastic forces, followed by lift effects.

3. Results of the Aeroelastic Analyses

This part examines the dynamic aeroelastic issue of the swept wing and curved wing using 2-way FSI analysis and
CFD models with 400,000 cells. The flow field's properties were determined using the same way as the rigid
analysis.
Fluid dynamics and structural mechanics must be coupled in FSI applications. Two separate solvers are used to solve
the equations regulating the flow and displacement of the structure. This work's FSI analysis is a transient time
domain-based analysis in which the issue is solved in a series of brief time intervals in both the CFD solver and the
finite element solver. The System Coupling module coordinates the solution between fluent and mechanical APDL
solvers during the FSI simulation.

We anticipated a typical flutter instability for both wing models at the start of our study.
Thus, fictitious moments of inertia were added near the tip of the two wings (symbolically represented at the wing
tip zone in Figure 19) to reduce the natural torsional frequency of vibration to a more realistic value and to promote
the interaction of bending and torsion modes with the aerodynamic loads.

4. Conclusions

Rigid CFD analyses and dynamic FSI analyses were performed to evaluate the aerodynamic and aeroelastic
performances of two high-aspect-ratio wings: a curved planform wing and a conventional swept wing, in order to
establish a new configuration for future generations of fixed-wing aircraft.
The two half wings under consideration have the conventional size of a long-range transport aircraft.

A commercial program was employed for the analyses. For a standard cruise flying condition (h = 10,000 m, Mach
= 0 85), the polar drag curves of the two wings were constructed and compared. The numerical models utilized in
this part of the research were considered to be stiff, and two highly refined structured CFD meshes (consisting of
about 6.5 million cells and/or nodes) were used. As proved in our tests, the curved wing reduces drag significantly
(the pressure component of drag ,Because of the many impacts of transonic events, the wave drag is largely
minimized.
As a simple case study, the fuel savings for a cruise aircraft at constant altitude were assessed using the computed
polar curves: about two tons of fuel are saved, and therefore pollution is decreased.
A sensitivity research determined that using coarser CFD meshes (these meshes now have roughly 0.4 million cells)
affects the lift coefficient by about 10%.
In terms of comparative aeroelastic analyses, and assuming that this degree of inaccuracy is acceptable, FSI
simulations supplied a slew of fresh numerical data that supplemented previously published findings.

The review of the literature provided a foundation for highlighting and interpreting the variations in the aeroelastic
behavior of the two half-wing models.
Nonlinear events are widely known to alter the dynamic responses of lifting surfaces in a transonic flow field, and a
bifurcation diagram for limit cycle oscillations may be developed where the flutter speed indicates the bifurcation
point.
In general, if the nonlinearities are mild enough, the postcritical stable pathways of this diagram are quite flat: the
amplitude of the self-sustained oscillations tend to grow very quickly for tiny increments in the speed parameter.

The half-wept-wing model becomes unstable for a smaller value of Mach and a flutter-buffet phenomenon
characterizes the form of its instability. The opposite occurs for strong nonlinearities, where the model's instability
turns into a single-degree-of-freedom flutter.

In a transonic flow state, a curved planform can impact the self-sustaining pressure field oscillations that underpin
the high-speed buffet and flutter-buffet interaction phenomena of wings.
The curved wing experiences less transonic effects, and the unstable condition is attained for a higher Mach number,
resulting in classical flutter.
Reference- 10.1155/2019/8210235

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijae/2019/8210235/