Transonic-aerodynamic-influence-coefficient approach for aeroelastic and MDO applications

A developed transonic-aerodynamic-influence-coefficient (TAIC) method is proposed as an efficient tool for applications to flutter, aeroservoelasticity, and multidisciplinary design/analysis optimization. Several plausible procedures for AIC generation are described. The modal-based AIC procedure is formally established as a general AIC scheme applicable to all classes of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. The present TAIC method integrates the previous transonic equivalent strip (TES) method with the modal AIC approach; its computer code ZTAIC has a similar input format to that of doublet lattice method (DLM) except with the additional steady pressure input. The versatility of ZTAIC is shown by two sets of cases studied: those cases with pressure input from measured data and those from CFD computation. Computed results of unsteady pressures and flutter points are presented for six wing planforms. In contrast to the usual CFD practice, the effective use of the modal AIC in ZTAIC is clearly demonstrated by the flutter calculations of the weakened and solid 445.6 wings, where the CPU time of a transonic flutter point using warm-started AIC is less than 1 min on a SUN SPARC20 workstation. Moreover, the AIC capability allows ZTAIC to be readily integrated with structural finite element method (FEM). Hence, it is most suitable to be adopted in a multidisciplinary design (MDO) environment such as ASTROS.