Comparison of Flight Test Data and Aeroelastic Simulation Results for DLR's Research Aircraft ATRA

Abstract

The development, testing and production of new aircraft are associated with considerable temporal and financial risks due to the product and manufacturing complexity. In order to accelerate the introduction of innovative technologies for more economical, more environmentally friendly and safer air transport vehicles and to better control the technological risks involved, DLR's guiding concept The Virtual Product aims at virtualizing the aircraft design, development and manufacturing processes. The availability and application of high fidelity, multidisciplinary simulation tools are a key factor, in particular in early phases of the design. The tools must provide reliable results in a robust manner for the entire flight envelope, including various aerodynamic nonlinearities. High fidelity simulation methods and tools with focus on loads analysis and virtual flight testing for jet transport aircraft have been developed and established in the past at DLR. This work addresses the validation of the tools. Simulation results are compared with data recorded during two flight tests of the DLR ATRA, an Airbus A320-200. A quasi-steady turn maneuver with a bank angle of 60° and a loadfactor of 2 g, and an unsteady pull-up maneuver with a maximum loadfactor of 2.2 g. Good agreement between the simulation results and the experimental data is obtained for both maneuvers.