Aeroelastic analysis of advanced geometry tiltrotor aircraft

A tiltrotor model is formulated to predict the dynamics and aeroelastic stability of composite-coupled advanced geometry rotors. Advanced geometry rotor blades are modeled with arbitrary sweep, anhedral, pretwist and planform taper variation with span. The effect of advanced geometry blades on the tiltrotor response and whirl flutter stability in airplane mode is studied. Blade tip sweep and tip droop increase the flutter speed while forward tip sweep, tip anhedral and planform taper decrease it. Predicted wing beam mode damping correlates satisfactorily with test data.