Abstract
We present a method for numerical simulations of a maneuvering aircraft, which uses a first-order unsteady panel method as the only source of aerodynamic forces and moments. By using the proposed method, it is possible to simulate a motion of an aircraft, while the only required inputs are geometry and inertia characteristics, which significantly reduces the time required to start the simulation. We validated the method by a comparison of recordings of flight parameters (position, velocities, accelerations) from an actual aerobatic flight of a glider and the results obtained from the simulations. The simulation was controlled by deflections of control surfaces recorded during the actual flight. We found a reasonable agreement between the experimental data and the simulation. The design of our method allows to evaluate not only the integral kinematic quantities but also instant local pressure and inertia loads. This makes our method useful also for a load evaluation of an aircraft. A significant advantage of the proposed method is that only an ordinary workstation computer is requiredto perform the simulation.
Highlights
The numerical simulation of a maneuvering aircraft is not a computationally demanding problem, when one uses a concept of aerodynamic derivations [1, 2]
First computer programs solving the equations of motion were developed in 1970’s [3]. These programs used the concept of aerodynamic derivations, which provide a very fast computation of forces acting on the aircraft
To use the aerodynamic derivations, a significant number of dependencies must be determined in advance, mostly by experiments in wind tunnel or by computational fluid dynamics methods (CFD) such as [4]
Summary
The numerical simulation of a maneuvering aircraft is not a computationally demanding problem, when one uses a concept of aerodynamic derivations [1, 2]. First computer programs solving the equations of motion were developed in 1970’s [3]. These programs used the concept of aerodynamic derivations, which provide a very fast computation of forces acting on the aircraft. To use the aerodynamic derivations, a significant number of dependencies must be determined in advance, mostly by experiments in wind tunnel or by computational fluid dynamics methods (CFD) such as [4]. Instead of pre-computing number of tables by CFD, we propose to couple the flight simulation program directly to a first-order unsteady panel method. Motions of control surfaces are introduced by morphing of the mesh
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