ATHENA: Aero-Thermo-Elastic Nonlinear reduced order modeling for hypersonic Airframes
Abstract
Supersonic and hypersonic airframes are subjected to extreme loading due to aerodynamic pressure, heat fluxes, and acoustic loading. These excitations result in very complex structural behavior, for which nonlinear modeling is a must when accurate strength and fatigue life prediction is of interest. Practice has shown that linearized models and/or modeling oversimplification of the above mentioned load sources, together with the neglecting of their coupling, could lead to erroneous, non-conservative estimation of the structural response. Especially when fatigue life estimation is of concern, designers need to be able to run long time span simulations comprising representative maneuvers. Current high fidelity modeling techniques, however, generate large discretized models that results in extremely long computational times, and are therefore of little or no use in a design context. In this scenario, reduced order models (ROMs) are unavoidable. Unfortunately, ROMs comprising all the necessary features of the phenomena at hand (geometrically nonlinear structural behavior, thermal and aerodynamic heat, acoustic loads) are somewhat still in their infancy. Several challenges are associated to the construction of ROMs for hypersonic airframes, namely 1. capturing the buckling and snap–through of the structural components; 2. capturing the significant change of the dominant structural modes with respect to the current temperature distribution; 3. the interaction with the aerodynamics, and 4. an efficient treatment of the different time scales characterizing the different fields. This project aims at the development of general, efficient and comprehensive aero-thermo-elastic problems ROMs for aeronautical applications. The goal is to furnish the designers and analysts with reliable and fast tools, which can deliver accurate responses at simulation times orders of magnitude faster than their high-fidelity counterpart.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 24, 2019
- Source ID
- FA95501810508
Entities
People
- Paolo Tiso
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- ETH Zurich
- United States Air Force