Structural optimization of an aeroelastically tailored composite flat plate made of woven fiberglass/epoxy

The idea of using laminated composites to passively control the aeroelastic phenomena is not totally new; using woven fiberglass, however, has not been addressed as widely as unidirectional fibers for this purpose in the existing literature. Considering the flutter as the objective, the current study was an effort to reach to an optimized configuration for an aeroelastically tailored composite flat plat made of woven fiberglass/epoxy. To that end effects of aspect ratio, sweep angle, and stacking sequence of laminated composites were studied. The adopted theories were the modal approach in conjunction with Doublet-Lattice Method (DLM) for structural and unsteady aerodynamic analysis, respectively. The interpolation between aerodynamic boxes and structural nodes has been done using surface spline. The parametric studies showed the effective ply orientation angle is between 15 and 30 degree, while the plates with lower aspect ratio and forward sweep angles showed higher flutter speed though the latter were imposed by divergence constraint.