Development of a Mid-Fidelity Aeroelastic Coupling Framework for Analyzing Rotor-Airframe Interactions

Abstract

In this paper coupled mid-fidelity simulations are performed to analyze aeroelastic interactional behaviour between rotor and empennage. To be able to simulate the interactional behavior, two coupling approaches are implemented and tested in this work. The first approach is a periodic loose coupling between the freewake solver UPM and a structural modal solver with a line based mapping. The second approach is a time-resolved coupling between UPM and a structural modal solver with a 3D surface mapping. The investigations show promising results compared to flight test data and thus provide a good commencement for further research.