Elastodynamic Modeling and Simulation of the AIRBUS A380 Wing

This paper addresses the dynamic modeling and simulation of the AIRBUS A380 wing. The governing equations of motion which describe the vibrational motion of the wing were derived using the extended Hamilton’s principle. The elastic wing structure is assumed to follow a Bernoulli-Euler cantilever beam clamped on the moving fuselage and carrying two Trent-900 engines on its span which were treated as lumped masses. The obtained equations of motion of the wing model were analyzed by means of the unconstrained modal analysis and the system natural frequencies were estimated. In order to verify the obtained results, the dynamic response was simulated using the Finite Element (FE) computational software by which the vibrational response was generated under several types of excitation. The obtained results showed good match between the natural frequencies extracted from the mathematical model and the corresponding ones generated by FE simulation. Also the developed computational model in this investigation was found successful in capturing the vibrational motions of a wide spectrum of relevant aerodynamic and unbalance loading conditions.