AACE-AFM-140: Computational Aeroelasticity for Next-generation Aircraft

The impact of aviation on the environment and the communities around airports is under scrutiny as never before. A substantial change in current design procedures is needed to manufacture cleaner, quieter, and safer aircraft to meet the ever increasing demand, and progress in more efficient engines is no longer sufficient.

The current industrial design process is based on linear assumptions, and this has been accepted as a means of compliance for generating gust and manoeuvre loads for aircraft design by certification authorities. Neglecting nonlinear characteristics, that may dominate the structural response and the flow development, results in conservative designs. This project targets this gap, and aims at developing a procedure to compute accurately manoeuvre and gust loads with well validated examples.

The project will provide an innovative nonlinear aeroelastic solution to lead to optimised models resulting in reduced uncertainties in the predictions which, in turn, lead to weight and cost savings. The project will include: an efficient loosely coupled aeroelastic solution process where all the CFD loads are transferred to the structural model through an advanced interpolation technique; a robust, conservative, and mesh-free procedure to deform the volume CFD mesh; and an efficient time-marching scheme to allow unsteady solutions to be performed at manageable costs.

The project capitalises from collaboration with two-leading industrial partners. The successful student is expected to visit and spend time at the partners’ sites.

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Dr Andrea Da Ronch, Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics research group, Email: [Email Address Removed], Tel: +44 (0) 2380 59 4787.