Staggered Approach for Fluid-Structure Interaction Phenomena of an AGARD 445.6 Wing Using Commercial CFD/CSM Software

Abstract

This paper presents the development of an efficient time-marching simulation technology for fluid-structure interaction applications using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational solid mechanics (CSM) software and in-house modules. By splitting the multidisciplinary coupling problem into three major analysis fields (the fluid field, the structure field, and the moving mesh pseudofield) one can solve each field using already available and validated software and the coupling between the different analysis fields can be accomplished by in-house software (FORTRAN and C codes). This simulation technology is able to predict both unsteady interaction phenomena and nonlinear aeroelastic problems in reasonable time, taking advantage of a high-performance computing network. Commercial CFD software was used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations and the chosen turbulence models of the fluid field while the structural field was solved using commercial CSM software. The transfer of information from the fluid field to the structural field and vice versa is computed by an in-house interpolation module, which reduces the user interaction to a minimum initialization. The third field, the moving mesh, was solved with another in-house code, which employs the spring network analogy and the elastic material analogy. The advancement of the solution is controlled by means of FORTRAN and C codes that manage the run/wait conditions of software modules based on the staggered procedures proposed in previous research. The proposed aeroelastic simulation technology was validated with the experimental data available for the advisory group for aerospace research and development (AGARD) 445.6 standard aeroelastic configuration for dynamic response at subsonic and transonic free stream Mach numbers.