ACTIVATE

The EU Commission's "European Green Deal" pursues ambitious greenhouse gas targets: Europe is to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, which requires a complete disappearance of net greenhouse gas emissions. Achieving this goal will require, among other things, aircraft configurations with significantly reduced fuel consumption compared to previous configurations. The DLR Aviation Strategy has defined various fields of action that are necessary to realize these high-level goals. In the "Energy-efficient aircraft" field of action, the focus is on controlling stability and load, among other things: flutter and flight mechanics control should be demonstrated by 2030.

The DLR project ACTIVATE is a building block in fulfilling the milestone of the DLR strategy by 2030. Particularly with regard to next-generation transport aircraft, it seems essential to have a precise understanding of flutter mechanisms, to be able to predict flutter in the design phase using fast and accurate methods and to have technological approaches and procedures in hand to reliably prevent potential flutter incidents.

Challenges

The challenge is to design aerodynamically more efficient aircraft with light and slender wings that are not susceptible to aeroelastic instabilities. This requires a deep understanding of various disciplines: Aerodynamics, structural dynamics and system dynamics must be understood individually in detail, as well as being mastered in multidisciplinary method development and analysis.