A Flexible, Yet Robust Coupled Method for Fluid Structure Interaction

A flexible robust method coupling computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational structural dynamics (CSD) is developed for the general applications of aeroelastic analyses. This coupling is achieved through a Multi-Disciplinary Computing Environment (MDICE), which allows several computer codes of ‘modules’ to communicate in a highly efficient fashion. The present approach offers the advantage of utilizing well-established single-disciplinary codes in a multi-disciplinary framework. The flow solver is density-based for modeling compressible, turbulent flow problems using structured and/or unstructured grids. A modal approach is employed for the structural response. The flow and structural solvers are fully coupled via successive iterations within each physical time step. Three aeroelastic cases were analyzed with the proposed method; they are steady flow/modal analysis of an AGARD 445 wing, transient flow/modal analysis of the AGARD 445 wing, and vertical tail buffeting of F/A-18.