Maneuver Loads Analysis using CFD Methods of a Fighter Aircraft

Kurzfassung

The DLR Future Fighter Demonstrator (FFD) is a highly agile, two-seated aircraft equipped with twin-engines, a reheat and a design flight speed extending into the supersonic regime (up to Ma=2.0). Based on a given conceptual design, the presented work focuses on the aeroelastic modeling, including structures, masses and aerodynamics. Using the models, a comprehensive loads analysis with 688 maneuver load cases, covering the whole flight envelope, is performed. Comparing the results obtained from aerodynamic panel methods (VLM and ZONA51) with higher fidelity results obtained from CFD, the necessity of CFD based maneuver loads analysis in preliminary design of such fighter configuration is shown, as it leads to physically different as well as higher loads. The rigorous application of CFD is a heavy burden during the preliminary design of an aircraft, and comes with certain requirements on the CFD solver. This presentation shows how SU2 was used (and extended) to accomplish the task.