Linearized FUN3D for Rapid Aeroelastic and Aeroservoelastic Design and Analysis

The overall objective of this Phase I project is to develop a hybrid approach in FUN3D, referred herein to as the Linearized FUN3D, for rapid aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic (ASE) design and analysis. The Linearized FUN3D solves a linearized Euler equation with a transpiration boundary condition using the FUN3D steady N-S solution as the steady background flow to efficiently generate a Reduced Order Model (ROM) in the form of the frequency-domain Generalized Aerodynamic Forces (GAF) matrices due to the structural modes, control surface kinematic modes and gust excitation. The Linearized FUN3D can generate an accurate unsteady aerodynamic solution in the small perturbation sense about a nonlinear steady flow condition. It also can avoid the moving mesh problem associated with applying the exact N-S boundary condition which requires additional computational resources, and becomes very complex in dealing with the discontinuous displacement in mode shapes such as the control surface modes for which generating a computational mesh could be a very tedious effort. In order to enable the Linearized FUN3D to perform frequency-domain open-loop and closed-loop aeroelastic analysis and to generate a plant model in terms of state space equations, several modules in ZAERO, ZONA's flagship commercial software for aeroelastic, ASE, and gust analysis, will be incorporated into the Linearized FUN3D. One can directly import such a plant model into MATLAB to design a flutter suppression and Gust Loads Alleviation (GLA) control system using the modern control design schemes available in MATLAB. The accurate flow field prediction of the wing pressures when a spoiler is deployed is currently beyond the capabilities of the existing aeroservoelastic codes. The wind tunnel measured unsteady pressures on the Benchmark Active Controls Technology wing will be selected to validate the proposed Linearized FUN3D for unsteady aerodynamic prediction due to spoiler oscillations.

The proposed Phase I effort is highly relevant to on-going and future NASA projects in NASA's fixed wing project under Fundamental Aeronautics Program. NASA's fixed wing projects involving several non-conventional design concepts such as the Truss-Braced Wing (TBW), Blended Wing Body (BWB), and Supersonic Business Jet (SBJ). Because of the BWB's flying-wing-type and the SBJ's slender fuselage designs, these designs are prone to the BFF (Body Freedom Flutter) problem. In addition, it is expected that the gust loads, on the high aspect ratio wing of the TBW configuration, will be one of the critical design loads. The proposed work will offer a computational tool to the NASA designers for early exploration of technologies and design concepts that exploit the trade-off between the passive and active approaches for mitigating the potential aeroelastic problems associated with those non-conventional configurations.

The design of an efficient maneuver, and Gust Load Alleviation (GLA) as well as flutter suppression controller requires an enormous amount of wind tunnel testing and flight testing to tune the control laws. An accurate aeroservoelastic model based on the Navier-Stokes flow equations would greatly enhance the early design of the controller and reduced wind tunnel and flight test time. The Linearized FUN3D can provide accurate steady and unsteady aerodynamics and can be applied to many categories of flight vehicles including blended wing-bodies, joined-wings, sub/supersonic transports, morphing aircraft, space planes, reusable launch vehicles, and similar revolutionary concepts pursued. Hence, the proposed research and its outcomes will be highly needed for designing the next generation of civil as well as military aircraft to meet the stringent future performance goals.

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