Development of Numerical Simulations of Dynamic/Aerodynamic Interactions

A procedure for simulating aerodynamic/dynamic interactions is described. The equations of motion of the flowing air and the lifting structure are integrated numerically by an iterative technique based on Hamming’s predictor-corrector method. The solution provides the flowfield and the motion of the lifting body simultaneously. The technique is modular and different models of the flow and the structure can be incorporated by simply changing subroutines. For the current examples of wingrock of highly swept delta wings and flutter of very flexible, very high-aspect-ratio wings, the flow-fields are considered incompressible and modeled by vortex-lattice and continuous vorticity-panel methods. These models are inherently nonlinear and provide a force-free wake as part of the solution. It is shown that the instabilities can be easily suppressed by means of actively controlled flaps.