Multifidelity Method for Locating Aeroelastic Flutter Boundaries

What is it about?

Aeroelastic flutter is an instability that may occur when a flexible structure is subject to an airflow. This instability is characterized by growing oscillations of the structure, which can lead to dangerous consequences for aerospace vehicles. Accurate flutter analysis is a challenge because high-fidelity aeroelastic models are expensive to evaluate, and several model evaluations are needed to represent all possible configuration in which flutter can occur. We introduce a multifidelity method that can produce accurate estimates of the aeroelastic flutter boundary that takes advantage of approximate aeroelastic models (low-fidelity models). We show that the multifidelity method can produce accurate estimates of the flutter boundary at a cost 85% lower when compared to standard approaches for flutter analysis.

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