Thermal-aero-elastic analysis of a typical all-moving control surface

Abstract

• A thermal interpolation method is proposed, which can easily load thermal field onto FEM models. This method can decouple thermal computation and basic structure dynamic mode computation. • Thermal dynamic characteristics of a typical all-moving control surface for hypersonic vehicle were investigated. • Mach number effects on flutter computation of the present all-moving control surface were studied via thermal effects or not. At present, thermal-fluid–structure coupling problems always need to be considered for the design of hypersonic flight vehicle. This work proposes numerical analysis of thermal-aero-elastic characteristic of a typical all-moving control surface for hypersonic flight vehicle. Basic aerodynamic and aero-thermal analysis of the model were gotten through finite volume simulations. By adopted transient temperature distribution of the control surface, thermal effects were interpolated to structural stiffness which could change modes of the control surface. Material nonlinearity of it due to thermal effect was included. Aeroelasticity analysis of the control surface was presented to find the difference of divergence speed between the usage of ‘thermal mode’ and ‘normal mode’. Flutter boundary was investigated to present the influence due to thermal effects. Different Mach numbers were used in flutter computations. It was seen from the results that thermal effects could obviously influence aeroelastic characteristic of the all-moving control surface. The proposed numerical process can provide a useful engineering method for aeroelastic studies on hypersonic flight vehicles.