Sensitivity of Flutter Modelling Using the Non-Linear Vortex Lattice Method to Changes in Viscous Airfoil Data

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of how sensitive non-linear vortex lattice method based aeroelasticity models are to variations in viscous airfoil data. These models are a useful low-fidelity tool for fast aeroelastic analysis, often used in early aeroelastic aircraft design and flight control law development. However, they are reliant on pre-existing availability of viscous airfoil data, which can be difficult to obtain without expensive wind tunnel testing or high-fidelity CFD computations. To determine how sensitive the aeroelastic results are to the variations in this airfoil data, a flutter simulation is run for the same wing test case, but using several different airfoil performance curves. The results are analysed to determine how much influence on the final flutter results these changes have.