Abylaikhan Mukhamejanov

Abylaikhan Mukhamejanov

Mechanical Engineering Student at Lehigh University ’27

Projects › Structures · FEA + test

Aeroelastic Wing

How much weight can a wing lose before it twists itself apart?

Aeroelastic Wing
My role
Structural analysis, fabrication and wind-tunnel testing (course team)
When
Fall 2025 · Advanced Mechanics of Materials
Where
Lehigh University
Tools
SolidWorks · ANSYS · MATLAB · laser cutter · carbon-fiber reinforcement · wind tunnel

Every gram you take out of a wing makes it fly more efficiently — until the wing gets so flexible that the airflow twists it further and further and it fails. We compared three balsa wing designs (straight, swept-forward, and a rib-and-strut structure) to find that limit, predicted it, and then put a wing in the wind tunnel to see.

What I did

  • Modeled the wings in SolidWorks and ran ANSYS for deflection and stress under the lift load.
  • Worked out twist, torsional stiffness and the speed at which each design goes unstable in MATLAB.
  • Laser-cut the rib-and-strut wing, reinforced the critical spots with carbon fiber and epoxy, and tested it in the wind tunnel.
CAD of the rib-and-strut wing
The rib-and-strut design.
FEA deflection and stress plots
Stress and deflection under load.
Principal stress in the rib structure
Stress in the rib structure.
Laser-cut wing reinforced with carbon fiber
The built wing with carbon-fiber reinforcement.
Wing in the wind tunnel
In the tunnel.
Skin stress FEA
Skin stress distribution.

How it turned out

Cutting the weight aggressively dropped the wing’s stiffness by about 98% and brought its instability speed down to 26 m/s. In the tunnel the root joint — where the bending is highest — gave way first at roughly 90 mph, right where the analysis said the weak point would be.