Aeroelastic Flutter Wing Sizing for a General Aviation Blended-Wing-Body Aircraft

This study presents a unified workflow for structural sizing and flutter analysis of lifting surfaces, integrating finite element modeling, structural strength and stability sizing, and aeroelastic assessment. The approach couples solutions from the NASTRAN finite element solver, including static loads analysis, modal analysis, and flutter prediction, with the iterative sizing capabilities of HyperX through its optimization module, HyperFEA. The workflow incorporates a methodology for reconciling aerodynamic loading predicted by NASTRAN’s Doublet Lattice Method (DLM) with higher-fidelity CFD results by mapping CFD pressure data onto the NASTRAN aerodynamic panel discretization. The methodology is applied to a general aviation–class blended wing body (BWB) aircraft, the FS-8 configuration to evaluate the effectiveness of the process across multiple internal wing layouts. A primary wing configuration is sized to satisfy all static strength and structural stability requirements. Subsequent flutter analyses identified aeroelastic instabilities, which were mitigated through targeted stiffness constraints. The resulting stiffness modifications successfully eliminated flutter within the flight envelope while maintaining total structural mass below the maximum takeoff weight limit, with modest adjustments to passenger count and fuel capacity. These results demonstrate that the integrated workflow reliably converges to a strength and flutter compliant design with minimal manual intervention. By combining automated structural sizing with an approach for improving aerodynamic load fidelity through CFD-informed corrections, the methodology enables rapid evaluation of stiffness and weight trade-offs applicable to both metallic and composite wing designs. This framework provides a scalable foundation for future application to larger or more complex aircraft configurations.