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A recent consideration in aircraft design is the use of folding wing-tips with the aim of enabling higher aspect ratio aircraft with less induced drag while also meeting airport gate limitations. This study investigates the effect of exploiting folding wing-tips in flight as a device to reduce both static and dynamic loads. A representative civil jet aircraft aeroelastic model was used to explore the effect of introducing a wing-tip device, connected to the wings with an elastic hinge, on the load behaviour. For the dynamic cases, vertical discrete gusts and continuous turbulence were considered. The effects of hinge orientation, stiffness, damping and wing-tip weight on the static and dynamic response were investigated. It was found that significant reductions in both the static and dynamic loads were possible. For the case considered, a 25% increase in span using folding wing-tips resulted in almost no increase in loads.

In this paper, the accuracy and practical capabilities of three different reduced-order models (ROMs) are explored: an enhanced implicit condensation and expansion (EnICE) model, a finite element beam model, and a finite volume beam model are compared for their capability to accurately predict the nonlinear structural response of geometrically nonlinear built-up wing structures. This work briefly outlines the different order reduction methods, highlighting the associated assumptions and computational effort. The ROMs are then used to calculate the wing deflection for different representative load cases and these results are compared with the global finite element model (GFEM) predictions when possible. Overall, the ROMs are found to be able to capture the nonlinear GFEM behaviour accurately, but differences are noticed at very large displacements and rotations due to local geometrical effects.