Monografías del Seminario Matemático García de Galdeano 33, 369–376 (2006) FLUID-STRUCTURE COUPLING OF A TURBULENT FLOW AND A GENERIC BLIMP STRUCTURE AT HIGH ANGLE OF ATTACK

Abstract. We present here a numerical study of the aeroelastic behavior of a pressurized flexible airship (blimp) during a flight with an angle of attack of 20◦. The airship is rep-resented by a 6:1 prolate spheroid generic geometry. The air flow is fully turbulent and is modeled by a LES model. We solve the Navier-Stokes three-dimensional compressible equations in their ALE form. The spatial discretization of these equations is achieved on unstructured tetrahedral meshes by a Finite Volumes/Finite Elements (FV/FE) mixed for-mulation. This fluid simulation is coupled to a structure solver by a staggered algorithm. We investigate a flexible pressurized hull compared to a non-pressurized one