Unsteady aerodynamic forces for aeroelastic analysis of two-dimensional lifting surfaces

Author(s)

Alexandre N. Marques ^[1] ; Carlos Frederico C. Simões ^[2] ; João Luiz F. Azevedo

Affiliation

^[1] Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica - Brasil

^[2] Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica - Brasil

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering; v. 28, n. 4, p. 474-484, 2006-12-00.

Abstract

The present work is part of an effort for developing a methodology for the aeroelastic analysis of two-dimensional lifting surfaces using an unsteady, Euler-based, CFD tool for the calculation of the aerodynamic operator. The CFD tool solves the flow problem with the finite-volume method applied to an unstructured grid context. The proposed methodology is based on the determination of the aerodynamic operator with the transfer function technique, which is given, in the frequency domain, by the analysis of the system response to an exponentially-shaped pulse in the time domain. The response in the frequency domain is achieved with the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique available in any mathematical manipulation tool, such as Matlab©. Some numerical experiments are performed involving unsteady subsonic and transonic flows around a flat plate and a NACA 0012 airfoil, and the results are presented as curves of generalized aerodynamic forces. The unsteady simulations start from a converged steady state solution obtained by the same CFD tool. Some unsteady validation results are compared with available data in the literature and the initial steps of the methodology are tested. The frequency domain results obtained agree very well with other numerical solutions given in the literature, which validates the present approach for the evaluation of the generalized aerodynamic forces for use in efficient, frequency domain, aeroelastic analyses. (AU)