High-Fidelity Aeroelastic Loads Calculation for a Transport Aircraft Configuration Including Pitch and Roll Maneuvers

Abstract

It is assumed, that the presence of nonlinear effects in transonic flow influences the aerodynamic load distribution and hence must be considered in the aeroelastic loads analysis of maneuvers. In this study a steady pull-up and two quasi-static rolling maneuvers are examined using the Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and compared to the vortex lattice method (VLM). In contrast to the RANS equations, the VLM is widely used for fast analysis of many load cases but does not include transonic effects. The pitch and roll rates are accounted for by the flow solver. A fully elastic transport aircraft configuration is analyzed. Elastic deformations are calculated by the modal approach and are loosely coupled with the aerodynamic model. The resulting loads are compared to maneuver analysis based on the VLM. For all maneuvers, the aerodynamic loads based on the RANS equations yield higher loads at the wings root by 1% to 2% and require larger negative balancing forces on the tail plane.