The Effect of Maneuver Load Alleviation Strategies on Aircraft Performance Indicators

The need to reduce the pollutant impact of aircraft emission drives the research on aircraft design progress through off-design performance improvement. This report proposes to investigate the effect of maneuver load alleviation technology via wing control surfaces for this purpose. A methodology is presented to model the MLA technology in aircraft conceptual design and to evaluate its impact on both existing and clean-sheet design. In addition, the possibility to consider flexible wings when under the influence of 2.5-g maneuver loads is addressed, to assess the impact of aeroelasticity in on wing weight in the conceptual design phase. The aeroelastic analysis method is validated against a higher-order analysis method with excellent correlation between the results from the two methods. Subsequently, the method is applied to the redesign of medium-range, single-aisle aircraft. It is shown that applying MLA using both the flaps and the ailerons can result in a fuel burn reduction and maximum take-off mass reduction of 2.1% and 2.2%, respectively.