Aeroelastic instability of composite wings by the consideration of different structural constitutive assumptions

The aeroelastic instability of composite wings modeled as Circumferentially Asymmetric Stiffness (CAS) thin-walled composite beams with closed cross-section is carried out. The objective has been to investigate the effects of different assumptions of constitutive equations on the aeroelastic instability behavior. Non-classical effects such as restrained warping and transverse shear are included in the beam model. The unsteady incompressible airloads are presented using Wagner[U+05F3]s function. A comparison of the results based on different constitutive equations for a number of configurations including three types of stacking sequence for a box cross-section and two types of stacking sequence for a biconvex cross-section, is performed. The effects of the values of twist as well as twist-bending stiffness coefficients have been studied carefully on the results. As an outcome of this investigation it is revealed that the different choices of structural constitutive equations which result in different values of stiffness quantities; namely, twist and twist-bending stiffness, significantly affect the predicted results. For example, a difference of up to 45% in the aeroelastic critical speed has been observed between different sets of constitutive equations in some cases.