Hinged Rotor

Dear all,
is there any possibility to model with FAST a two-blade hinged rotor? Each blade should have an additional individual flapping DOF permitting the rotation of the blade at the root about an axis belonging to the rotor plane and orthogonal to the blade. From this (old) discussion here Pitch - Flap coupling for FAST or YAWDYN it seems it is not possible.
One could reproduce the wanted mechanism by a local change of the blade bending stiffness, together with an ad hoc mode shape. Would this solution be acceptable? In this way, however, the rotation axis is not fixed in the rotor plane, but it would rotate according to the pitch motions.

Thank you very much,
Alessandro

Dear Alessandro,

While the forum topic you found is old, the status has not really changed; FAST does not currently have blade flap-hinge DOFs. And I doubt you would get the accuracy you desire by an ad-hoc bending stiffness and mode shape; your understanding regarding the effect of blade-pitch on the hinge axis is also correct.

Although not easy, you could always customize FAST yourself to add the DOFs you want.

Best regards,