A finite element suite for deformation analysis of composite aeroelastic structures subjected to operational aerodynamic loading

A finite element suite for robust and reliable deformation analysis of aeroelastic composite lifting surfaces is presented. The suite consists of a natural-mode finite element solver, an adaptive mesh generator, an interface for communication with external aerodynamic codes and an auxiliary program for defining material properties. With the aim of reducing the computational time of the finite element analysis within an iterative coupled aero-structure analysis, the aerodynamic and structural characteristics of the aeroelastic composite surface are directly incorporated in the mesh generation procedure. This is realized by utilizing an anisotropic mesh density function. It has been shown that a mesh generated based on the presented theory has significant effect on improving the efficiency and the performance of coupled aero-structure analysis of aeroelastic lifting surfaces.