Claude LELAIE

Senior Vice President Product Safety

A380 - Flutter tests

1. Definition of
flutter
Flutter is the coupling of differ-
ent oscillation modes on a system.
Let’s take an example on an air-
craft. In flight, due to its flexibility,
the wing can oscillate in torsion
and in flexion. The frequencies of
these two motions are depending
on speed. If, in some conditions,
they are identical or very close one Figure 1
to the other, there can be an “auto- A380 first flight
over the Pyrenees
excitation”. It means that the oscil-
lation on one axis can amplify the there is a huge number of vibration envelope, the crews perform these
other one and vice-versa, therefore modes of different parts: wings, tests with all the safety equipment:
increasing the energy. If the ampli- engines, empennage, control sur- parachutes, helmets, life jackets,
tude becomes too large, a rupture faces... On top of this, it depends lifeboat... The emergency evacua-
may occur very quickly. on the quantity of fuel in the wings tion door (tunnel going through the
and in the empennage, on the speed cargo door) is also armed.
This phenomenon is similar to
and many other parameters. Several parameters have to be con-
what happens when a child is on a
swing. Moving the legs at the right Theoretical computations are now sidered: CAS, Mach, weight, fuel
frequency amplifies the motion of very reliable and allow to determine repartition. For the same flight
the swing and increases the global in advance the potentially criti- conditions, for example, it is often
energy. cal conditions. They are based on necessary to perform flights with
Flutter can also occur on struc- mathematical models of the struc- various amounts of fuel in the tank
tures other than aircraft. Some of ture of the aircraft. These models of the horizontal tail plane: full,
you may have seen the impres- are then adjusted thanks to ground half full and then empty, because
sive images of the rupture of the tests where the aircraft is excited this difference modifies the oscilla-
Tacoma suspension bridge in the with variable frequency oscillators. tion frequencies and therefore the
USA, about 60 years ago. The very Such tests are performed on a de- flutter characteristics.
strong wind led to amplify several velopment aircraft before the first
Safety must be ensured well above
oscillation modes until the rupture. flight and last several days. Despite
VMO, because in case of wind
Now all suspension bridges must this good level of analysis, explor-
gradient, this value may well be
be sized to resist to the strongest ing the flight envelope in speed and
exceeded. In flight, the regulations
winds. Mach must be done carefully.
ask for the demonstration that the
Four engines aircraft give more aircraft is free of flutter up to VD
frequently difficulties in the area of (D for Dive, as in some cases, this
2. Flutter flutter. The reason is that the exter- speed can only be demonstrated
characteristics nal engines may be strong contrib-
utors to various oscillations.
in a dive). The difference between
VMO and VD is usually around
On an airplane, flutter is character- 50 kts on a classical aircraft. But
ized by oscillations diverging very on fly-by-wire aircraft, this margin
quickly. Therefore, the risk of flut- 3. Flutter test has been reduced thanks to the high
ter inside the flight envelope, and flights speed protection. In case of over
speed the aircraft will react to limit
even well outside the borders to
have a safety margin, are not ac- Flutter flights are obviously risky. the speed excursion. Depending on
ceptable. On big transport aircraft, Until the full opening of the flight the type of aircraft, if the protec-

Safety first #10 August 2010 - 1/4

 Safety

tions due to an outside source. In

the past, before the A380, the pilots
were not authorized to touch the
side stick during the test and there-
fore execution was rather difficult.
The altitude was maintained using
the trim wheel. The bank angle
was kept close to zero with very
small pressure on the pedals. At
high Mach, differential thrust was
sometimes used to control roll, due
to the reduced roll induced by the
rudder. The speed had to be main-
tained with a good precision with
the thrust lever. One of the key dif-
ficulties was that any action on the
thrust gave a pitching moment that
had to be compensated with the
trim wheel. One of the pilots was
in charge of maintaining the trajec-
tions are lost, the maximum author- citation for each mode. Sometimes Figure 2 tory: altitude and heading and the
A380 3/4 front view other one was keeping the speed.
ized speed may be reduced accord- in flight, test points are restarted to
ing to what has been validated. On obtain an amplitude well adapted Obviously a good coordination was
the A380, we have VMO = 340 kt for the analysis, but not too strong needed.
and VD = 375 kt. to avoid damages of the airplane.
The crews were concerned about
What has been explained for speed All parameters are transmitted by their ability to maintain the flight
is also valid for Mach Number. On telemetry to the ground. Each test parameters very precisely due to
the A380, the values are MMO = point is analysed by specialists, as the large inertias of the A380. Each
0,89 and MD = 0,96. soon as the measurements are com- test point lasted for 3 minutes and
pleted. This review takes a vari- had to be performed with an elec-
able time, according to the degree tric trim and no trim wheel. Fi-
Above VD and MD, the certifica- of confidence and coherence with nally, the Design Office prepared
tion regulations require a theoreti- the models. Sometimes the clear- a specific direct flight control law
cal demonstration that there is a ance to go ahead for the following such that the test conditions could
supplementary speed and Mach test point is given immediately. still be maintained by action on
margin where the aircraft is clear The crew may also have to wait the stick. Everything then became
of flutter. several minutes for the clearance. straightforward.
It has also happened on some pro-
For each test point in flight, oscil- grammes that the flight had to be
stopped for further analysis. Progression in speed (CAS) is gen-
lations at variable frequencies are erally slow, by step of 15 kts. In
sent to some flight controls via a parallel, for each speed, the Mach
specific computer. A single test Flight controls are excited in differ- Number has to be increased pro-
lasts 3 minutes. The frequency in- ent ways. For the ailerons, there are gressively as the relationship be-
creases during the first part, then symmetrical and anti-symmetrical tween Mach and CAS is a function
decreases to come back to the ini- modes. For the first ones, the ailer- of altitude.
tial value. The crew can feel well ons of both wings are deflected si-
the coupling modes as, at this time, multaneously in the same direction.
there is an increase of the ampli- For the anti-symmetrical modes For high Mach Numbers, it is not
tude of the oscillation. If necessary, they are in opposition (like in a roll always possible to maintain the
the test can be stopped immedi- control mode). Most of the tests altitude during 3 minutes because
ately either by the pilots or by the are performed with the ailerons but drag increases rapidly with Mach.
flight test engineers. It is difficult some are also done using elevators In this case, tests are performed in
to know in advance what ampli- or rudder. descent and, as variable frequency
tude is adapted for each speed in oscillations could not be used, it is
order to have a sufficient structural replaced by what we call “pulses”,
response for a proper analysis. The test points have to be performed which are abrupt impulses sent by
Therefore the engineers have at in direct law in order to avoid in- computers to the flight controls.
their disposal several levels of ex- troducing flight controls deflec- Above MMO, it is quite frequent

Safety first #10 August 2010 - 2/4

to find buffeting of various levels. ings. Clearly, reinforcements were The campaign was interrupted for
This buffeting generally reduces necessary before the next flutter some weeks due to a commercial
the risk of flutter as it disorganizes flights. campaign. Then, on the 1st of De-
the potential oscillations of the dif- cember 2005, the dive at VD / MD
ferent modes. was performed. We were aware of
At the end od August, a new flutter the difficulty to stabilize precisely
flight was performed with modified MD due to this shock wave influ-
The final test is the dive at VD / belly fairings. The target was to encing the measurement. The test
MD. It is necessary to start at the open the flight envelope up to the was repeated several times, reach-
ceiling of the aircraft. Then, with conjunction of VMO / MD. It was ing an indication of 0.988. Finally
full thrust, the crew begins the dive the first opportunity to fly above the flutter specialists agreed that
until reaching MD in descent. MD MMO. This has been done by step, this was sufficient to certify the
is kept with a speed increasing up but when the aircraft reached a aircraft.
to VD. At the conjunction of MD value slightly above 0.95, the Mach
/ VD, the test is over and the pilots Number suddenly jumped up to
can throttle back and pull gently 0.98. The reason was a shock wave After the flutter tests came the time
on the stick. During all the tests, crossing the static pressure sensor of the tuning of the flight control
pulses are sent to the flight controls and it was not possible to stabilize laws, as it is necessary to demon-
on the various axes. The flight test precisely MD = 0.96. strate that with the protections, it is
engineers must act quickly as for not possible to exceed the cleared
some aircraft, the drag is such that flight envelope. This will be the sub-
the rate of descent is high. Starting from mid September, one ject of another article.
or two flutter flights were per-
formed every week. It was not pos-
4. History of the sible to do more as some time was
needed for data analysis and on
A380 flutter tests top, as the aircraft was well shaken
during each flight, there was a need
On the A380, the envelope opening for a thorough inspection. For all
at VMO / MMO was performed at these flights, the amount of fuel in
flight n°5 without specific flutter the tanks was adjusted to cover all
test due to the good results obtained the situations, one of the key issues
after analysis of the ground tests. being the fuel quantity in the trim
tanks.
Figure 3
The first real flutter flight was flight A380 over Switzerland
n°21, on June 9th 2005, about one
and a half months after the begin-
ning of the flight tests. Take-off
weight was 533 tons and landing
weight 485 tons (normal MLW is
386 tons). During this flight, with
maximum fuel in all tanks, the
speed has been increased up to VD
(375 kt) at a low Mach Number.

The following flutter tests were per-

formed during flight n°51, at the be-
ginning of August 2005. Why such
a delay between these two flights ?
The reason is that priority had been
given to other activities, mainly the
validation of the final aerodynamic
configuration: slats and flaps de-
flections... During this second flut-
ter flight, the envelope has been
opened up to the conjunction VD
and MMO, without any abnormal
finding in flight. However, when on
ground, it appeared that there were
serious damages on the belly fair-

Safety first #10 August 2010 - 3/4

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