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Virtual flight test tool for aircraft aerodynamics simulations with buffeting
Manoj Rajanna, Ming-Chen Hsu, Ning Liu, Jim Lua, Nam Phan
Session: Poster pitches day 1
Session starts: Monday 26 June, 09:50
Presentation starts: 09:50



Manoj Rajanna (Global Engineering and Materials, Inc.)
Ming-Chen Hsu (Iowa State University)
Ning Liu (Global Engineering and Materials, Inc.)
Jim Lua (Global Engineering and Materials, Inc.)
Nam Phan (NAVAIR)


Abstract:
Extensive and costly flight and ground tests have to be performed during the design and certification of air vehicles. Given the limited time and resource, a subset of critical tests has to be performed in an attempt to cover each point in the sky for the operation of the air vehicle. For a given aircraft geometry and an operational condition, high-energy vortices can be generated and become unstable and burst. The frequency content of the vortex can be shifted from very high-frequency ranges to relatively low frequencies to excite the vibration mode of a critical structural component. The high dynamic response resulting from the buffeting effect damages the impacted structural surfaces and shortens their fatigue life. The primary goal of our study is to investigate and validate a recently proposed stabilized finite element framework for 3D compressible viscous flows for the simulation of an aircraft for an arbitrary operational profile. A strongly-coupled Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) formulation for compressible flows that is developed based on an augmented Lagrangian approach. The method is suitable for handling problems that involve non-matching fluid–structure interface discretizations. In this work, the fluid is modeled using a stabilized finite element method for the Navier–Stokes equations of compressible flows and is coupled to the structure, which is formulated using isogeometric Kirchhoff–Love shells. The combination of finite elements for fluid and the isogeometric analysis (IGA)-based Kirchhoff-Love shell for structures allows greater modeling flexibility and provides a suitable balance between speed, robustness, and accuracy for FSI simulations. The strongly-coupled system is solved using a block-iterative technique. Three examples are used based on a case with unsteady flow around an airfoil undergoing pitch oscillation, a shock wave impacting an elastic panel, and a buffeting response of a representative aircraft during pitch maneuvering. The buffet simulation results indicate that the unsteady dynamic flow behind the wing region can lead to nonlinear oscillations of the horizontal tail.