Simulation of Surface Pressure Fluctuations on an Airbus-A320 Fuselage at Cruise Conditions

Abstract

The fuselage surface pressure fluctuations on an Airbus-A320 aircraft at cruise conditions are simulated by solving a Poisson equation. The right-hand-side source terms of the Poisson equation, including both the mean-shear term and the turbulence–turbulence term, are realized with synthetic turbulence generated by the fast random particle-mesh method. The stochastic realization is based on time-averaged turbulence statistics derived from a Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes simulation under the same condition as in the flight tests conducted with DLR, German Aerospace Center’s Airbus-A320 research aircraft. The fuselage surface pressure fluctuations are calculated at three streamwise positions from front to rear, corresponding to the measurement positions in the flight tests. Features of the pressure fluctuations relevant to the fuselage surface excitation are obtained and analyzed. A good agreement for one- and two-point spectral characteristics of the surface pressure fluctuations is found between the simulation and flight-test results.