A CFD framework for aeroelastic gust load calculations

Man, William Liw Tat

A CFD framework for aeroelastic gust load calculations

Master Thesis

2018

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment

Abstract

A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) framework for the simulation of the aeroelastic response of aircraft flying under gust loading was developed. The multiphysics, Finite Volume, VertexCentered code Elementaltextsuperscript{textregistered} was employed and calculations were performed for the transonic flow regime. In the structural domain, the fuselage was treated as rigid and the wing was considered for aeroelastic calculations. The latter was represented by a beam stick model using Timoshenko beam theory in Elementaltextsuperscript{textregistered}'s structural module. The case under consideration was the NASA Common Research Model (CRM) flying at Ma = 0.86 with a 30 ft gust applied over the aircraft. Key contributions of this work included implementation of a computationally efficient gust model as well as the development of a fluidstructure interface. The latter was to transfer forces from a deforming wing skin to the wing-beam in a conservative manner while reflecting the resulting displacements on the wing surface. An interface library was developed for this purpose and 3rd order accurate Bezier curves used to recover a smooth deformed wing. The various sub-components of the aeroelastic model were rigorously validated. Following this, the developed framework was applied to the CRM under gust load conditions.

Keywords

Mechanical Engineering

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