Pilot-in-the Loop CFD Method Development

Abstract

This project is performed under the Office of Naval Research program on Basic and Applied Research inSea-Based Aviation (ONR BAA12-SN-0028). This project addresses the Sea Based Aviation (SBA)virtual dynamic interface (VDI) research topic area Fast, high-fidelity physics-based simulation of coupled aerodynamics of moving ship and https://www.dacspr.documentservices.dmaneuvering rotorcraft. The work is a collaborative effortbetween Penn State, NAVAIR, and Combustion Research and Flow Technology (CRAFT Tech). Thisdocument presents progress at Penn State University.All software supporting piloted simulations must run at real time speeds or faster. This requirementdrives 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 airwake are calculated using CFD solutions without the presence of the helicopter main rotor. The gusts from the turbulent ship airwake are then re-played 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.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 27, 2016
Accession Number
AD1008341

Entities

People

  • Joseph F. Horn

Organizations

  • Pennsylvania State University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Ground and Sea Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Couplings
  • Demonstrations
  • Dynamic Response
  • Dynamics
  • Equations Of Motion
  • Flight Simulations
  • Flight Simulators
  • Flow
  • Helicopters
  • Inviscid Flow
  • Navier Stokes Equations
  • Sea Based
  • Simulations
  • Simulators

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)