A Computational Study of Wall Effects on the Aeroelastic Behavior of Spanwise Flexible Wings

In this paper, we present a computational aeroelastic analysis of flexible flapping wings in the vicinity of solid walls. The wall effects change the aerodynamic forces and moments of the wings, and thus the aeroelastic behavior. The numerical simulation is carried out using a fluid–structure interaction framework by coupling the computational fluid dynamics and computational structural dynamics. A preconditioned Navier–Stokes solver based on a finite volume method is used for the aerodynamic analysis. The structural analysis is performed using a nonlinear structural model based on a geometrically exact beam formulation. The method is validated using previous numerical and experimental results. The aeroelastic characteristics of the flexible wings with and without the walls are computed and compared.