Computational aeroelasticity for next–generation aircraft

Abstract

During the conceptual stage of an aeroplane design project, the use of high–fidelity computational methods as a routine engineering design tool for the estimation of aerodynamic loads on wings is prohibitive due to the high computational costs for design exploration studies. This difficulty can be overcome by a novel methodology for rapid, physics–based predictions of aerodynamic loads and can be deployed as a unified approach for subsonic and transonic flow analysis in steady–state and unsteady flow regimes. The approach, which is presented in this thesis, is based on three components: 1) a cost–effective flow solver of the infinite–swept wing problem that captures sectional viscous phenomena, 2) a steady–state and unsteady Vortex–Lattice method (VLM) that captures three–dimensional inviscid flow effects around a finite wing, and 3) an appropriate coupling algorithm that corrects low–fidelity three–dimensional inviscid flow with high–fidelity sectional nonlinear viscous aerodynamic data. In this thesis the formulation of all three components of this approach are described in detail followed by test cases, where the capabilities and performance of the novel efficient nonlinear aerodynamic model are demonstrated in steady–state and unsteady flow regimes. Finally, in this work the application of this mixed–fidelity and low–cost aerodynamic model is demonstrated in the field of computational aeroelasticity, where the aerodynamic algorithm is coupled with a nonlinear geometrically–exact beam model with the purpose of obtaining aerodynamic loads on highly deflected and twisted aeroplane wings. The computational aeroelasticity framework, which incorporates the nonlinear FE–beam model and the aerodynamic coupling code, provides the ability to obtain rapid aeroelastic results, which are in the same order of magnitude of the accuracy as results obtained by high–fidelity computationally intensive aeroelasticity frameworks.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Andrea Da Ronch: orcid.org/0000-0001-7428-6935

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