Transonic unsteady aerodynamic and aeroelastic calculations about airfoils and wings

Abstract

Some of the research in the area of computational unsteady transonic flow about airfoils and wings, including aeroelastic effects, is surveyed. Results are presented for the unsteady, transonic, small-disturbance potential equation. Several calculations are shown of unsteady transonic flow over airfoils and wings, including cases that employ viscous modeling and cases that compare with experimental data. First an early result of transonic flow with moving shock waves over an airfoil is described. Next a calculation is compared with an experiment of flow over an NACA 0012 airfoil, for which there is a large shock movement. For flow over wings, first calculations are shown of flow over a transport wing, including comparisons with experiment of aeroelastic results. Next calculations of flow over a low aspect ratio wing are compared with experimental results. Finally, aerodynamic calculations of flow over a variable-sweep wing are compared with experiment, and the effect of varying the sweep on the aeroelastic damping is studied.