Virtual Flutter Plight Test of a Full Configuration Aircraft with Pylon/External Stores

An advanced aeroelastic analysis using a computational structural dynamics (CSD), finite element method (FEM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is presented in this Paper. A general aeroelastic analysis system is originally developed and applied to realistic design problems in the transonic flow region, where strong shock wave interactions exist. The present computational approach is based on the modal-based coupled nonlinear analysis with the matched-point concept and adopts the high-speed parallel processing technique on the low-cost network based PC-clustered machines. It can give very accurate and useful engineering data on the structural dynamic design of advanced flight vehicles. For the nonlinear unsteady aerodynamics in high transonic flow region, Euler equations using the unstructured grid system have been applied to easily consider complex configurations. It is typically shown that the advanced numerical approach can give very realistic and practical results for design engineers and safe flight tests. One can find that the present study conducts a virtual flutter flight test which are usually very dangerous in reality.