Resolvent Analysis of Large Aircraft Wings in Edge-of-the-Envelope Transonic Flow



Houtman, Jelle, Timme, Sebastian ORCID: 0000-0002-2409-1686 and Sharma, Ati
(2022) Resolvent Analysis of Large Aircraft Wings in Edge-of-the-Envelope Transonic Flow. In: AIAA SCITECH 2022 Forum.

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Abstract

Shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction on wings can result first in self-sustained flow unsteadiness called shock buffet and eventually in a structural response called buffeting. While it is an important aspect of wing design and aircraft certification, particularly for modern transonic air transport, not all of the underlying multidisciplinary physics are thoroughly understood. Herein we focus the discussion on three main points. First, a practical implementation of an iterative resolvent method heavily relying on the efficient solution of large sparse linear systems of equations is introduced. Second, its application as a predictive tool to explore large scale flow unsteadiness on an aircraft wing early, following the work in Timme [1], is demonstrated. And third, we continue the exploration of the impact of the elastic wing structure in such flow conditions, following the work in Houtman and Timme [2]. An industrial computational fluid dynamics solver has previously been modified to solve the global stability problem that accounts for the aeroelastic coupling. Those ideas for linearised aerodynamics tools are expanded herein by a novel algorithm to address the now-ubiquitous resolvent problem aiming to compute optimal forcing and response when stability analysis alone is non-informative. The chosen test case is the NASA Common Research Model for which already both fluid modes on the rigid (yet statically deformed) wing and fluid-structure coupled modes on the corresponding elastic configuration are available as reference, helping guide the process. The results suggest that the resolvent approach is capable of predicting strong modal behaviour, such as linked to shock buffet, well before the notional onset of large scale unsteadiness when a global stability tool can first identify dominant coherent physics through weakly damped eigenmodes. On the question of including structural degrees-of-freedom in shock-buffet investigations, or not, it can be said that, while the coupled formulation can give a more complete picture of the physics overall (and is hence important to consider), in subcritical conditions the structural dynamics play a secondary role when optimally forcing the coupled system.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Unspecified)
Divisions: Faculty of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 14 Jan 2022 11:45
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2023 21:17
DOI: 10.2514/6.2022-1329
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3146195