Pilot-in-the-Loop CFD Method Development
Abstract
All software supporting piloted simulations must run at real time speeds or faster. This requirement drives the number of equations that can be solved and in turn the fidelity of supporting physics based models. For real-time aircraft simulations, all aerodynamic related information for both the aircraft and the environment are incorporated into the simulation by way of lookup tables. This approach decouples the aerodynamics of the aircraft from the rest of its external environment. For example, ship air wake are calculated using CFD solutions without the presence of the helicopter main rotor. The gusts from the turbulent ship air wake are then replayed into the aircraft aerodynamic model via look-up tables. For up and away simulations, this approach works well. However, when an aircraft is flying very close to another body (i.e. a ship superstructure) significant aerodynamic coupling can exist. The main rotor of the helicopter distorts the flow around the ship possibly resulting significant differences in the disturbance on the helicopter. In such cases it is necessary to perform simultaneous calculations of both the Navier-Stokes equations and the aircraft equations of motion in order to achieve a high level of fidelity. This project will explore novel numerical modeling and computer hardware approaches with the goal of real time, fully coupled CFD for virtual dynamic interface modeling and simulation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2016
- Accession Number
- AD1002388
Entities
People
- Joseph F. Horn
Organizations
- Pennsylvania State University