Time-Accurate Simulation of Longitudinal Flight Mechanics with Control by CFD/RBD Coupling
This paper describes a multidisciplinary computational study undertaken to compute the flight trajectories and simultaneously predict the unsteady free flight aerodynamics of aircraft in time domain using an advanced coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD)/rigid body dynamics (RBD) technique. This incorporation of the flight mechanics equations and controller into the CFD solver loop and the treatment of the mesh, which must move with both the control surface deflections and the rigid motion of the aircraft, are illustrated. This work is a contribution to a wider effort towards the simulation of aeroelastic and flight stability in regions where nonlinear aerodynamics, and hence potentially CFD, can play a key role. Results demonstrating the coupled solution are presented.