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Aeroelastic effects of battens on the flight dynamics of a MAV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2016

J. Babcock  and
R. Lind
J. Babcock*
Affiliation:
University of Florida, Florida, USA
R. Lind
Affiliation:
University of Florida, Florida, USA
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Wing flexibility is well established as providing gust rejection and delayed onset of stall for micro air vehicles. As such, many designs adopt wings of a flexible material mounted onto a skeleton comprised of a stiff leading-edge spar and stiff chordwise strips, called battens. These battens are shown to provide additional strength at localised regions of the wing and thus improve the gust rejection and delay stall; however, their effect on the flight dynamics is less studied. Using a numerical modeling approach, this paper explores a design space of vehicles with a varied number of wing battens mounted onto a baseline vehicle with a flexible wing. The battens are modelled as stepwise changes in torsional stiffness along the wing span. The resulting trim characteristics, static stability metrics and flight dynamics are evaluated. The battens are shown to improve gust rejection but otherwise have a complicated effect across the design space. A reduction in the number of battens improves the longitudinal static stability derivative slightly but lowers the lateral and directional static stability. The damping is decreased for the short period mode and increased for the phugoid and dutch roll modes as the number of battens is reduced.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 118 , Issue 1207 , September 2014 , pp. 985 - 1008
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 2014 

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