Fast Aero-Elastic Analysis for Airborne Wind Energy Wings using Viscous-Inviscid Interaction

Lightweight or semi-rigid wings as well as textile kites commonly used in Airborne Wind Energy applications have strong aero-elastic deformations during flight. These effects have been investigated in a number of works. Due to the computational complexity of computational fluid dynamics, fast methods rely on simple inviscid methods or pre-computed assumed functional relations for the aerodynamic pressure distribution. These approaches lack the ability to accurately model changes in drag, change in lift slope and separation. Ongoing research into methods that use Navier-Stokes equations improve these predictions, but are not be feasible for fast design iterations and even less feasible for dynamic simulation besides singular validation runs.