Conference on Modelling Fluid Flow (CMFF’22) The 18th International Conference on Fluid Flow Technologies / 30 August - 2 September 2022
Aeroservoelasticity investigation with panel method
When designing a new technological device that is affected by aerodynamic forces, it is almost common practice to model it with 3D CFD methods to study the design and to decide in which direction further developments should be taken. An elastic wing aircraft is considered to be a particularly complex model in which the number of parameters to be tested is too large to consider calculations that take tens or even hundreds of hours per simulation for each factor. In the industry, "high fidelity" Finite Volume Method simulations have become the general practice. Instead we use a so called panel method, where modelling the entire flow field is not necessary, only the surface mesh of the investigated body has to be generated. With this method the computational demand decreases drastically, but we know that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In addition to reducing the calculation time, we need to put the accuracy of the results on the other arm of the balance. The panel method solves only one Laplace equation for the full velocity potential, therefore it cannot model the additional drag due to the viscous medium.