Time-dependent aeroelastic simulation of rapid manoeuvring aircraft

This paper presents the aeroelastic-related computational activity performed by the EADS-M team in the ESPRIT Project EP25050 JULIUS. The main objective of the JULIUS project was the development of 6S, a Problem Solving Environment, designed to provide an integration platform for software modules required to simulate complex, large scale, industrial problems. As part of the industrial demonstrator suite defined to assess 6S capabilities when performing large scale, multi-physics computational simulation, EADS-M has simulated the fluid-structure interaction during rapid aircraft flight manoeuvres at transonic conditions by use of an advanced, time-accurate CFD-CSM coupling methodology. The aerodynamic modelling, elastomechanical modelling and the temporal and spatial coupling algorithms implemented in this approach are presented. The solution of the unsteady Euler equations for transient flow involving moving boundaries for realistic 3-D configurations is computationally expensive. Use of highly parallel computers is one of the ways for reducing the run times. The design of the coupling procedure and its components has been driven by computational efficiency requirements on parallel, distributed memory architecture machines, resulting in a highly efficient implementation which can utilise today's high performance computing resources. The paper addresses the computational issues. Finally, the results obtained from the simulation of a 5-g pull-up manoeuvre for a generic X-31- Experimental Aircraft Configuration are presented.