Aircraft with Semi-Aeroelastic Hinged Wingtips: A First-Order Design-Oriented Study Using Multibody Dynamics

This paper presents a design-oriented investigation of a commercial transport aircraft equipped with semi-aeroelastic hinged (SAH) wingtips. A multibody flight-dynamics formulation is developed to model articulated wings with hinge degrees of freedom, addressing a key limitation in previous SAH analyses. The framework is coupled with a hybrid aerodynamic approach combining experimental baseline data with CFD-validated vortex-lattice method predictions, together with an improved panelization strategy for hinge axes not aligned with the freestream. Two SAH concepts are evaluated: a locked hinge acting as a rigid span extension and a continuously free hinge that passively rotates under aerodynamic loading. For a 10% span increase, the locked hinge provides only a marginal efficiency improvement (0.2% lower required engine power). For a 20% span increase, the locked hinge yields a larger benefit (1.5%). Simulations with sudden angle-of-attack changes show reduced wingtip overshoot for the free hinge, indicating passive load alleviation capability. The proposed framework enables quantitative design-space exploration of SAH wingtip concepts.