Flutter prediction for a very flexible wing wind tunnel test

Two different nonlinear aeroelastic tool sets, SHARPy and the Modal Rotation Method (MRM), have been employed to predict and design a wind tunnel flutter test campaign of a very flexible wing, the Pazy Wing, as part of the 3rd Aeroelastic Prediction Workshop. The first method, SHARPy, uses geometrically exact beams coupled with an Unsteady Vortex Lattice, which is linearised about a deformed configuration, reduced by means of Krylov subspaces and analysed to compute the stability boundaries of the wing. The MRM is based on structural modal data, from either beam models or finite element models, coupled with a doublet-lattice aerodynamic model from ZAERO of the straight wing configuration. The excellent agreement between numerical and experimental data for structural-only and static aeroelastic analyses paves the way for predicting the stability boundaries of the Pre-Pazy wing with sufficient confidence for the safe design of a flutter wind tunnel test campaign.