Aeroelastic Response of Aircraft Wings to External Store Separation Using Flexible Multibody Dynamics

In aviation, using external stores under the wings is a common method of carrying payload or fuel. In some cases, the payload can be rigidly attached to the wing. However, stores must often be ejected during flight for aircraft, such as military type, which carry drop tanks and missiles. This may cause the wing to respond dynamically with increasing amplitudes, due to the impulsive load of ejection and the change of total mass. This is especially critical in aircraft with highly flexible wings, such as those with high aspect ratios. In this case, it is crucial to evaluate the wing response to store separation, which requires a suitable simulation environment that is able to support nonlinear and multidisciplinary analysis. To address such a need, this work presents the use of flexible multibody dynamics in the simulation of wing response to store separation. To demonstrate, a highly compliant wing was selected with a rigid body that was mounted on the wing to represent an external store. The time marching simulation of the wing before and after the store separation was presented to show the features and benefits of the method.