Development of a Parallel Fluid-Structure Coupling Environment and Application to a Wind Tunnel Model under High Aerodynamic Loads

Abstract

Accurate measurementsof the aerodynamic performance in wind tunnel experiments require to retain dynamic similarity to respresent the flow characteristics of real aircraft configurations. High Reynolds numbers for a full-scale aircraft in cruise flight are realized in wind tunnels by reducing the temperature to cryogenic conditions and increasing the static pressure to compensate for the smaller reference lengths. Clearly, this increases the aerodynamic loads to an extent that even rigid models show a significant deflection, depending on the flow conditions. Consequently the aeroelastic deflections have to be taken into account in a numrical simulation of a wind tunnel experiment. Usually this is done by coupling fluid dynamics and sturctural mechanics (see 3). Efficient application of this multidisciplinary analysis requires a robust and flexible simulation process chain running on modern high performance computing (HPC) cluster systems. In the following a flexible and efficient process chain is proposed and the results of a coupled fluid-structure simulation for a test case of the European project HiReTT (High Reynolds Number Tools and Techniques for Civil Transport Aircraft Design (see 6) are shown.