High-fidelity Aeroelastic Analysis of Very Flexible Aircraft

This paper describes the development and capabilities of a high-fidelity aeroelastic sim-ulation tool for very flexible aircraft (HiFi-VFA) within a Multi-Disciplinary Computing Environment (MDICE). The code loosely couples a geometrically nonlinear, quasi-3D structural solver with an Euler/Navier-Stokes flow solver capable of arbitrary, large, mesh deformation. Verification of the static aeroelastic solver is presented for a hypothetical high aspect ratio wing discussed in the literature. Time domain aeroelastic simulations using the new code generally agree well with the response of an in–house aeroelastic simulation toolbox, but the high–fidelity results suggest the presence of higher aerody-namic damping than predicted by the finite state aerodynamics. With these results, flutter boundaries are sought using two flutter prediction methods (ARMA and FMDS) and the advantages/disadvantages of these prediction methods in computational aeroelasticity are assessed. I