Airbplane aeroelasticity: practice and potential

A perspective on the practice, issues, and potential of aeroelasticity is presented. The issues of cycle time reduction and improvements in the fidelity of aeroelastic analysis need to be emphasized for aeroelasticity to support adequately the airplane configuration development and configuration decisions. The introduction of fly-by-wire control systems has increased the complexity as well as the fidelity requirements for the aeroelastic analysis. The business cost of inaccuracies in loads and dynamics predictions can be seriously high. Therefore, innovative approaches should be encouraged to address these issues. Aeroelasticity has an opportunity to contribute to airplane design by evolving to become a more integrating discipline. Although many of the methods and processes in different sub disciplines are in place already, others need to be developed further for improved usability, efficiency, fidelity, and integration. The most challenging problems in realizing the full potential of aeroelasticity are not just technical but are also organizational in nature. The organizational issues are related to management of multidisciplinary teams in a lean engineering environment. Thus, to realize the multidisciplinary integrating potential of aeroelasticity and its contributions to the configuration decisions, technical and management foresight, leadership, and vision are required.