Sensitivity Analysis of Aeroelastic Response of a Wing in Transonic Flow

A sensitivity study is carried out for changes in shape parameters, namely, aspect ratio, surface area of the wing, taper ratio, and sweep. The structural model is based on a Ritz solution technique with wing deflections represented by Chebyshev polynomials. A recently developed compressible aerodynamic state-space model is used to represent the unsteady aerodynamic airloads on the wing. The aeroelastic equations are solved as an eigenvalue problem to determine the critical speed of the wing. The derivatives of the flutter and divergence speeds with respect to the shape parameters are calculated by both analytical and finite difference methods