Dragonfly wings are highly corrugated, which increases the stiffness and strength of the wing significantly, and results in a lightweight structure with good aerodynamic performance. How insect wings carry aerodynamic and inertial loads, and how the resonant frequency of the flapping wings is tuned for carrying these loads, is however not fully understood. To study this we made a three-dimensio...

The aerodynamic loads on a Canard Rotor/Wing vehicle are investigated using inviscid numerical simulations in order to understand the flight characteristics of the vehicle during conversion from rotary to fixed-wing flight. A series of numerical simulations at seven azimuthal rotor indices are presented covering a quarter turn of the rotor. With symmetry arguments, these simulations produce 25 ...

As wind turbines continue to grow larger, problems associated with adverse aerodynamic loads will grow more critical. Thus, the wind energy technical community has begun to seriously consider the potential of aerodynamic control methodologies for mitigating adverse aerodynamic loading. Spatial and temporal attributes of the structures and processes present in these flow fields hold important im...

A multidisciplinary design study for Active Aeroelastic Wing technology considering the uncertainty in maneuver loads estimated by linear aerodynamic theory is presented. The study makes use of a design of experiments/response surface methodology and modal-based structural optimization to construct deterministic relationships between wing structural weight and control laws design, based on line...

The inclusion of smart devices in wind turbine rotor blades could, in conjunction with collective and individual pitch control, improve the aerodynamic performance of the rotors. This is currently an active area of research with the primary objective of reducing the fatigue loads but mitigating the effects of extreme loads is also of interest. The aerodynamic loads on a wind turbine blade conta...

Aerodynamic efficiency of intermodal freight trains can be significantly improved by minimizing the adjusted gap lengths between adjacent loads. This paper first develops a static model to optimize load placement on a sequence of intermodal trains that have scheduled departure times. This model applies when full information on all trains and loads is available. Then, a dynamic model is develope...

The previous two projects jointly conducted by the same team, AVT/T-121 Application of Smart Materials in the Vibration Control of Aeronautical Structures (April 2000March 2002) and AVT/T-129 Development of Control Strategies for the Vibration Control of Smart Aeronautical Structures (April 2002March 2004), form the basis of this project. During these, first the smart beam-like structures were ...

Tracking a ballistic missile in its reentry phase is one of the missile defence challenges as these reentry vehicles penetrate with large aerodynamic loads and sudden decelerations from exoatmospheric to endoatmospheric phase. With the advent of anti-ballistic missiles, the main goal of missile defence systems is to track the reentry vehicle to locate them precisely for allowing midair altitude...

In this paper, the equation of motion of an elastic 2 DoF wing model has been derived using Lagrange's method. The aerodynamic loads on the wing were calculated via the Strip-Theory and the effect of compressibility was included. Wing deflections due to bending and twist motions were determined using the Assume-Mode method. The aeroelastic equations were solved numerically using the V-g method....