Design Methodology for Aeroelastic Tailoring of Additively Manufactured Lattice Structures Using Low-Order Methods

Additively manufactured wings can be aeroelastically tailored, which offers the potential for increased air vehicle efficiency via lighter structures. This paper develops a methodology to design aeroelastically tailored wings using additively manufactured lattice structures. Adaptive meshing techniques are used to design the topology of the lattice to align with the load direction, and the lattice is optimized to minimize the structural weight and to improve the flutter margin. To alleviate the computational effort of aeroelastically tailoring a structure, a low-order model for the dynamics of the lattice structure is developed. This structural low-order model is coupled to a previously developed physics-based transonic flutter model to compute the aeroelastic behavior of wings with internal lattice structures. The structural low-order model is validated by comparing against the full-order structural dynamics model. Finally, the design methodology is applied to the design of an internal structure of an aircraft wing to increase that wing's flutter speed.