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Tools for Analyzing Flutter in the Presence of Aeroelastic Uncertainty

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Air Force
Contract: FA9302-07-M-0008
Agency Tracking Number: F071-354-2185
Amount: $99,981.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: AF071-354
Solicitation Number: 2007.1
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2007
Award Year: 2007
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2007-04-16
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2008-01-18
Small Business Information
1410 Sachem Place, Suite 202
Charlottesville, VA 22901
United States
DUNS: 120839477
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Alec J.D. Bateman
 Sr. Research Scientist
 (434) 973-1215
 bateman@bainet.com
Business Contact
 Connie Hoover
Title: General Manager
Phone: (434) 973-1215
Email: barron@bainet.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

Because flutter can lead to catastrophic failure of the aircraft structure, reliable prediction of the aeroelastic behavior of the aircraft is vitally important to provide information about the boundaries of the flight envelope outside which the aircraft is susceptible to flutter. In spite of major progress in computational methods in recent years, particularly in computational fluid dynamic (CFD), there is still little reliance on using computational models to certify aeroelastic stability. One of the key difficulties is that the aeroelastic models are normally represented in a deterministic way, while in real-world fluid structure interactions, many uncertainties exist. Assessing the effects of uncertainties using traditional approaches such as Monte-Carlo analysis is impractical because of the computational complexity of high-fidelity aeroelastic models. The highly nonlinear nature of these models creates problems for other typical approaches such as linearization and worst-on-worst testing. The goal of the proposed research is to develop uncertainty analysis tools based on a generalized polynomial chaos expansion approach that can be effectively applied in the context of aeroelastic modeling. The tools will provide insight into the sensitivity of the flutter boundary with respect to various uncertainties, and will provide confidence interval estimates for the flutter boundary.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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