Static aeroelastic rolling of a highly flexible wing: Pazy wing with aileron

An evaluation of the commercial transport aircraft developed over the past decades evidences an increasing trend toward the use of high aspect-ratio wings. This trend is justified by the well-known effect of slender wings in reducing fuel consumption, leading to lower operational costs and a milder environmental impact. There are many studies about the effects of geometric nonlinearities on aeroelastic behavior of very flexible wings in symmetrical maneuvers. However, geometric nonlinearities may also significantly affect the aeroelastic behavior of the wing under non-symmetrical conditions, especially when ailerons are deflected. Within this context, this work presents a static fluid-structure interaction approach to evaluate the rolling characteristics of very flexible wings. First, a modified version of the very flexible Pazy Wing from Aeroelastic Prediction Workshop (AEPW-3) is proposed, now equipped with ailerons. Next, a fluid-structure interaction tool that couples a full potential aerodynamic solver with an implicit nonlinear structural solver is presented to allow simulations of wings with deflected ailerons. The presented method is applied to the modified Pazy wing considering multiple linear and nonlinear structural analyses, for different aileron deflection angles. The results show that when geometric nonlinearity effects are considered, the aileron effectiveness tends to decrease as the structural flexibility increases. On the other hand, if geometric nonlinearities are neglected, the aileron effectiveness falsely enhances as the wing flexibility rises.