A Substructure-Based Method for Evaluating Structural Deformation

In the present study, a method that integrates substructure coupling with the vortex lattice method (VLM) was introduced for the assessment of structural deformation. The aerodynamic force is solved by mean of the VLM and interpolated to structure nodes via infinite plate spline (IPS). By integrating the constraint mode set and IPS for structure design and analysis systematically, a deformation mapping from the coarse global structure to delicate local structure was successfully constructed. The proposed method was validated using a thin panel deformed linearly and nonlinearly respectively. The results indicate that significant deformation case aligns closely with those from MSC.Nastran, underscoring the viability of the proposed method. However, due to the diminutive size of approximation objects in minor deformation, the method necessitates refinement. Further, it is imperative to consider the parameters within IPS for interpolation accuracy. Notably, the optimal parameter exhibits negligible variance in precision across varying degrees of deformation.