Experimental determination of unsteady aerodynamic coefficients and flutter behavior of a rigid wing

In this paper, unsteady aerodynamic forces acting on a three-dimensional wing and its aeroelastic behavior are determined experimentally using a novel semi-experimental method. Towards this end, a rigid wing specimen was fabricated and tested in a low speed, subsonic wind tunnel with two motion sensors for plunging and pitching. Time history samples of the wing motion were obtained at a single air speed and processed using the “Aerodynamics is Aeroelasticity Minus Structure” (AAEMS) system identification method to generate a reduced-order aerodynamic model in discrete-time, state-space format. Coupling the aerodynamic model with the structural model, obtained from the ground vibration test (GVT), results in a reduced-order aeroelastic model that can be analyzed with a variable dynamic pressure. Despite the absence of pressure measurements the model yields a good prediction of aeroelastic behavior, especially for lightly damped modes and for a wide range of dynamic pressures, including the flutter point. It is shown that when the dynamic pressure is at 29.6% of the critical flutter value the method estimates the flutter speed with less than 2% error. However, as the reference dynamic pressure is lowered (relative to the flutter dynamic pressure) the flutter prediction becomes less accurate due to the lack of pressure data. The experimental procedure outlined in this paper can be useful when predicting flutter based on data obtained at sub-critical dynamic pressures.