This course will foster the students' interest in aeroelasticity and structural dynamics, introduce them to aeroelastic concepts such as "the flexible aircraft", provide them with a wide range of tools to model problems in aeroelasticity and discuss modern methods and challenges in this field.

2 lectures per week

Rooms where video & audio recording is possible are requested for the lectures in this course to explore the "flipped-classroom" approach and to offer this course online in the future.

None

None

35% Final Written Exam

25% Mid Term Exam - to be administered in one of the booked Lab sessions; will include the use of a computer and notes from class.

40% Project work: Analytical and numerical implementation of concepts derived in class.

It is the default expectation that all courses will offer opportunities for reassessment or deferred assessment. Where it is not possible to offer this in some assessment components, the grade achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade, and any exceptions for this course are described below.

[No exceptions]

The aims of this course are to:

■ foster student interest in aeroelasticity and to introduce them to aeroelastic concepts such as "the flexible aircraft" and structural dynamic/aerodynamic interaction and stability;

■ provide an understanding of complex structural dynamics and aeroelasticity by use of simple Lagrangian models of aircraft wing, fuselage, and rotor systems;

■ give the student a wide range of tools to model the structural dynamics of aircraft wings;

■ demonstrate the diverse nature of aeroelasticity problems by bringing together aspects of previous courses, such as dynamics, structures, mathematics and aerodynamics;

■ provide the student with a phenomenological understanding of aeroelastic problems such as control reversal, divergence and flutter;

■ provide an understanding of the binary flutter problem.

■ provide an introduction to modern numerical methods in structural dynamics and aeroelasticity

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ apply Lagrange's method and the principle of virtual displacement to model and analyse dynamic behaviour of flexible aircraft structures

■ apply assumed modes to generate binary and ternary structural-dynamic approximations of flexible aircraft and calculate the modes of simple aircraft models.

■ evaluate the concepts of wing elastic axis, inertial axis and aerodynamic centre, and demonstrate how the relative positioning of these axes may affect the structural-dynamic/aeroelastic stability of the wing;

■ critically analyse the concepts of aeroelastic flutter and divergence on lifting surfaces

■ Select and evaluate suitable methods, including numerical tools, for structural dynamics and aeroelastic analysis of aircraft configurations, providing justification in a technical report referencing appropriate technical literature.