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Global stability analysis of elastic aircraft in edge-of-the-envelope flow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2023

Jelle Houtman*
Affiliation:
School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3GH, UK
Sebastian Timme*
Affiliation:
School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3GH, UK
*
Email addresses for correspondence: jelle.houtman@liverpool.ac.uk, sebastian.timme@liverpool.ac.uk
Email addresses for correspondence: jelle.houtman@liverpool.ac.uk, sebastian.timme@liverpool.ac.uk

Abstract

Shock buffet on wings is a phenomenon caused by strong shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction resulting first in self-sustained flow unsteadiness and eventually in a detrimental structural response called buffeting. While it is an important aspect of wing design and aircraft certification, particularly for modern transonic air transport, not all of the underlying multidisciplinary physics is thoroughly understood. Building upon a single-discipline shock-buffet stability study, this work now investigates the impact of an elastic structure in these extreme flow conditions. Specifically, a triglobal stability analysis of a fluid–structure coupled system is presented, utilising the implicitly restarted Arnoldi method with a sparse iterative Krylov solver and novel preconditioner. Asymmetry resulting from a static aeroelastic simulation based on a finite-element model of the underlying geometry in a wind tunnel modifies the global modes of the earlier fluid-only symmetric full-span analysis. A flutter stability analysis at wind-tunnel flow conditions below shock-buffet onset finds no instability in the structural degrees-of-freedom, whereas in shock-buffet flow with globally unstable fluid modes additional marginally unstable structural (and fluid) modes emerge. The developed stability tool for coupled analysis is instrumental in identifying those physically relevant and strongly coupled modes where a standard pk-type (p being eigenvalue and k reduced frequency) flutter analysis fails. With the complementary computation of adjoint eigenmodes, the core of the instability is pinpointed to a relatively small wing area which may help to effect the control and delay of this detrimental transonic unsteadiness. We contribute to the question on how the presence of the elastic wing structure impacts on the otherwise pure aerodynamic three-dimensional shock-buffet dynamics.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Figure 0

Figure 1. Representative structural mode shapes for NASA CRM test case with corresponding wind-off frequencies. Surface colours indicate the modal deformation in ${z}$-direction. Peculiar features on the aircraft surface are the various cut outs on the wind-tunnel model for experimental sensors and to house the instrumentation. (a) Mode 2, 40.94 Hz; (b) mode 20, 426.74 Hz; (c) mode 25, 526.93 Hz; (d) mode 26, 568.48 Hz; (e) mode 28, 641.54 Hz; ( f) mode 30, 679.62 Hz.

Figure 1

Table 1. Typical parameter settings used for inner–outer eigenvalue solver.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Wing deformation showing ($a$) bending and ($b$) twist over dimensionless span ${\eta }$ at angle of attack ${\alpha = 3.75^\circ }$ comparing experimental data from the ETW campaign and static aeroelastic results emphasising differences on port and starboard wings.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Comparison of experimental and numerical surface pressure coefficient data at angle of attack ${\alpha = 3.75^\circ }$ and eight spanwise locations. Streamwise coordinate ${x}$ is normalised by corresponding local chord length ${c}$.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Log magnitude (ad) and phase (eh) of complex entries of matrix $\boldsymbol{\mathsf{G}}$ at angles of attack ${\alpha = 3.5^\circ }$ and ${3.75^\circ }$ over sampling frequency ${\omega }$. Indices above the plots refer to matrix entries ${\mathsf{G}}_{ij}$. Symbols indicate sample locations.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Eigenvalues originating in structural system based on pk-type flutter analysis at ${\alpha = 3.0^\circ }$, $3.5^\circ$, $3.7^\circ$ and ${3.75^\circ }$ at the flow condition encountered in the wind-tunnel environment. Mode 28 at ${\alpha = 3.75^\circ }$, denoted ${\blacksquare }$, failed to converge and the proper value, computed with the Arnoldi method, is therefore also shown. A close-up view, indicated by the red box in ($a$), is shown in ($b$) for clarity. The fluid modes denoted by $b$ and $c'$ correspond to the leading buffet and destabilised modes, respectively, found with the Arnoldi method and are included to show their proximity to the structural modes.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Visualisation of modal assurance criterion correlating the structural part of the aeroelastic (structural) modes with the amplitudes of the wind-off finite-element method (FEM) modes at different angles of attack. At angle of attack $\alpha =3.75^\circ$ the corresponding values of the leading aeroelastic (fluid) modes, labelled $a$, $b$ and $c$, are included (with mode $c'$ in final column).

Figure 7

Figure 7. Comparison of eigenspectra showing ($a$) fluid-only results for symmetric (sym) vs asymmetric (asym) static deformation at angle of attack $\alpha = 3.75^\circ$ and ($b$) asymmetric fluid-only vs coupled aeroelastic results, all computed with the Arnoldi method. Modes are labelled according to Timme (2020), along with mode $c'$, which migrates into the unstable half-plane in the coupled system. For reference in ($b$), all faint-coloured fluid–structure interaction (FSI) modes are structural modes with the red-dashed box indicating the relevant region from figure 5.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Magnitude of unsteady surface pressure coefficient ${|\hat {C}_p|}$ and volumetric iso-surfaces of real part of ${x}$-momentum ${\widehat {\rho u}}$ at values of ${\pm 0.75}$ of $(a)$ leading and $(b)$ second unstable global modes from fluid-only stability analysis on statically deformed, asymmetric geometry at angle of attack $\alpha =3.75^\circ$. Underlying eigenvectors are scaled to unit length with respect to the inner product, specifically $\langle \hat {\boldsymbol {w}}_{f},\hat {\boldsymbol {w}}_{f}\rangle =1$. The base-flow zero-skin-friction line is also shown on the surface.

Figure 9

Figure 9. Visualisation of ($a$) leading and ($b$) second shock-buffet modes of fluid–structure coupled system (labelled b in figure 7) at angle of attack $\alpha =3.75^\circ$. Surface contours show real part of deformation in ${z}$-direction derived from structural part ${\hat {\boldsymbol {\eta }}}$ of coupled eigenvector, while volumetric iso-surfaces illustrate real part of $x$-momentum ${\widehat {\rho u}}$ at values of ${\pm 0.75}$. Underlying direct eigenvectors are unit length with respect to the inner product, specifically $\langle \hat {\boldsymbol {w}},\hat {\boldsymbol {w}}\rangle =1$, whereas the adjoint eigenvector additionally satisfies bi-orthonormality, specifically $\langle \check {\boldsymbol {w}},\hat {\boldsymbol {w}}\rangle =1$. Slices of ($c$) direct mode at dimensionless span $\eta = 0.66$, ($d$) adjoint mode at $\eta = 0.55$ and ($e$) momentum-only wavemaker at $\eta = 0.576$ are also shown. The inset of ($e$) shows iso-surfaces of the wavemaker at values of $\theta _{f}=5\times 10^2$, $1\times 10^3$ and $1\times 10^4$. All slices include the base-flow sonic line (solid black). The base-flow zero-skin-friction line is also shown in ($a$), ($b$) and inset of ($e$).

Figure 10

Figure 10. Visualisation of structural part of leading shock-buffet mode $b$ showing imaginary part of deformation in $z$-direction for ($a$) direct (cf. the real part in figure 9a) and ($b$) adjoint mode. Corresponding structural wavemaker is given in ($c$). The base-flow zero-skin-friction line is also included for orientation.

Figure 11

Figure 11. Visualisation of (a) structural mode 28 and (b) unstable mode $c'$ of the coupled system. Variables and plotting styles are identical to those in figure 9.

Figure 12

Figure 12. Coupling ratio for coupled modes at various angles of attack. Fluid and structural modes are denoted with half- and fully filled markers, respectively.

Figure 13

Figure 13. Goland wing test case showing (a) free-vibration mode shapes and (b) part of the eigenspectrum. The eigenspectrum is computed by a pk-type method, showing the trace with respect to altitude and the eigenvalues at target altitude of 30 000 ft, compared with implicitly restarted Arnoldi method (IRAM) as implemented in DLR-TAU through coupling with ARPACK library. An exact p-type analysis, without approximations on the linearised aerodynamic response, is also shown.

Figure 14

Algorithm 1 Preprocessing stage of arrowhead preconditioner

Figure 15

Algorithm 2 Application stage of arrowhead preconditioner

Figure 16

Figure 14. Typical convergence behaviour of preconditioned GCRO-DR iterative solver (with 120 Krylov and 20 deflation vectors) showing 20 linear solution histories for NASA CRM eigenvalue problem at angle of attack $\alpha = 3.7^\circ$ with shifts (a$\zeta = 0.05+2.63i$ and (b$\zeta = 2.63i$, contrasting arrowhead and block-Jacobi preconditioners.

Figure 17

Table 2. Impact of inner solution tolerance on outer convergence at angle of attack $\alpha =3.75^\circ$ using shift $\zeta = 2.7i$. The eigenvalues correspond to fluid mode $c'$ and hard-to-converge structural mode 28 (cf. figures 5 and 7). The relative error is shown for the growth rate and frequency separately and calculated, e.g. for the real part, as $|1-\text {Re}(\lambda )/\text {Re}(\lambda _{10^{-9}})|$, with $\lambda _{10^{-9}}$ denoting the solution with tolerance $10^{-9}$ and bold decimal places indicating unconverged digits with respect to $\lambda_{10^{-9}}$.