Influence of Wing Elasticity on Gust Load Alleviation of an Airliner

Alleviation of gust-induced loads enables the realization of a lighter and more flexible aircraft structure, reducing the overall fuel consumption and increasing passenger comfort. Within this work, dynamic deflection of leading- and trailing-edge flaps, distributed along the entire wingspan of an airliner, is utilized to compensate for the gust-induced loads of a load-critical [Formula: see text] gust in transonic cruise flight. The focus is laid on the influence of aeroelastic effects on the effectiveness of the gust load alleviation. High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics–computational structural mechanics (CFD-CSM) coupled simulations account for an accurate representation of aerodynamic and aeroelastic effects. It is shown that dynamic leading- and trailing-edge flap deflection is able to almost completely suppress the gust-induced flapping motion of the wing. The wing torsion can be kept within the order of magnitude that occurs during gust interaction without load alleviation. This leads to only small differences between rigid and elastic consideration of the aircraft wing. The gusts’ bending loads can be alleviated by 88% with the leading-edge flaps compensating for the additional torsional moment of the trailing-edge flap deflection.