(Huntsville, Ala. | June 1, 2021) – CFD Research Corporation announced today the award of a SBIR Phase II contract from the Air Force to create a novel, efficient, and accurate fully-coupled modeling approach for the aeroelastic analysis of threat-damaged flight surfaces. One of the key aircraft design requirements is aircraft survivability and vulnerability to damage caused by a variety of threat types. Damage which results in the physical removal of a portion of a wing or primary flight control surface undoubtedly leads to a reduction in aerodynamic performance and control degradation.
“This new tool will help evaluate the aeroelastic effects of damaged flight surfaces for aircraft vulnerability assessments and help define the critical damage/flight conditions constituting a catastrophic failure of the structure,” HQ Yang, Chief Scientist and Principal Investigator, said.
During earlier work, the fully-coupled aeroelasticity problem was formulated into a decoupled problem including a novel technique for rapid extraction of nonlinear fluid modal mass, modal damping and stiffness of damaged and undamaged flight surfaces. The final delivered software may be executed by non-experts such that the aeroelastic analysis may be applied to a wide variety of platform applications.
When a modern combat aircraft is damaged in battle, answers are required to questions such as (1) can the aircraft complete a mission if it is damaged in a given way, (2) can the aircraft take off again and be used in combat, but with a reduced capability, (3) is it safe for the aircraft to take off and fly to another location to be repaired, and (4) will the damage cause the loss of the aircraft?
“In the past almost all efforts have concentrated on how the damage affects the structural integrity of an aircraft, rather than on how the damage affects the flight dynamics of the aircraft. The main concern has been whether damaged aircraft structures can safely withstand the loading expected during limited or full combat. It is true that both the flight dynamic and structural aspects of battle damage are important. However, minor damage from a structural viewpoint, such as a missing or damaged leading-edge flap, may be major damage from a flight-dynamic viewpoint,” Sami Habchi, CFD Research executive vice president, said.
