Aerostructures Test Wing

The Aerostructures Test Wing (ATW) was an apparatus used in a flight experiment during a program of research on aeroelastic instabilities. The ATW experiment was performed to study a specific instability known as flutter. Flutter is a destructive phenomenon caused by adverse coupling of structural dynamics and aerodynamics. The process of determining a flight envelope within which an aircraft will not experience flutter, known as flight flutter testing, is very dangerous and expensive because predictions of the instability are often unreliable. The ATW was a small-scale airplane wing that comprised an airfoil and boom (see upper part of Figure 1). For flight tests, the ATW was mounted on the F-15B/FTF-II testbed, which is a second-generation flight-test fixture described in Flight-Test Fixture for Aerodynamic Research (DRC- 95-27), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 19, No. 9, September 1995, page 84. The ATW was mounted horizontally on this fixture, and the entire assembly was attached to the undercarriage of the F-15B airplane (see lower part of Figure 1). The primary objective of the ATW project was to investigate traditional and advanced methodologies for predicting the onset of flutter. In particular, the ATW generated data that were used to evaluate a flutterometer. This particular flutterometer is an on-line computer program that uses method analysis to estimate worst-case flight conditions associated with flutter. This software was described in A Flutterometer Flight Test Tool NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 1999, page 52.