Ground Vibration Tests on a Flexible Flying Wing Aircraft - Invited

Abstract

This paper presents ground vibration test results for a small flexible flying wing aircraft. The aircraft is suspended from a spring and an input force is applied via an electrodynamic shaker. Accelerometer measurements are obtained at twenty points along the aircraft wings. This measured force and acceleration data is post-processed to identify modal frequencies and mode shapes using two different methods. The effect of small changes in the experimental procedure on the identified modal parameters is discussed. The tests were performed on a series of flexible aircraft that were built to study flutter and other aeroelastic phenomena.