Aerodynamic/Dynamic/Control interaction
Abstract
The present report attempts to present a comprehensive review of achievements made under the support of a continuing series of related AFOSR grants. The essence of all the work was to develop numerical simulations that capture the interactions among aerodynamics, rigid-body dynamics, structural dynamics, and control systems. All of these components of a flying airplane were viewed simply as elements of a single dynamic system. All the work led toward an end result in which a maneuvering aircraft could be simulated without resorting to wind-tunnel or flight tests. A major obstacle to this development is the fact that one must know the motion of the aircraft and its control-surface deflections in order to calculate the flowfield, and one must know the flowfield in order to calculate the aerodynamic forces and, from them, the motions. One cannot determine the flowfield unless one knows the motion of the airplane and one cannot determine the motion unless one knows the flowfield. In this work the Pis have made significant advance in the development of the needed methodology. By expanding the structural deflections in terms of the free-vibration modes, the principal investigators were able to covert the governing partial- differential equations or the structure into a system of ordinary-differential equations. The aerodynamic loads were obtained by refining and extending the vortex-lattice concept. However, it must be noted that both the aerodynamic model and the structural models used in the examples can be changed, by simply changing subroutines in the general code, without changing the general approach. Unsteady aerodynamics, structural dynamics, active controls, interactions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 22, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA266187
Entities
People
- Ali. H. Nayfeh
- Dean T. Mook
Organizations
- Virginia Tech