Accelerated convergence of static aeroelasticity using low-fidelity aerodynamics

Abstract

An approach to reduce the computational cost of high-fidelity aeroelastic problems is presented. The structural analysis is performed by the finite element analysis program Nastran and aerodynamic loads are estimated by the panel code A502/Panair. In this paper a defect-correction equation is formulated to determine the static aeroelastic solution. A computationally inexpensive vortex-lattice method is used to generate aerodynamic forces and gradients that accelerate the static aeroelastic convergence by reducing the total number of A502/Panair load calculations. The defect-correction approach is compared to a conventional serial staggered scheme with Aitken acceleration. Results indicate that the defect-correction approach performs well with reduced computation time, in particular for strongly coupled problems that exhibit large deformations.