Jack J. McNamara

Studies on Fluid-Thermal-Structural Coupling for Aerothermoelasticity in Hypersonic Flow

The field of aerothermoelasticity plays an important role in the analysis and optimization of airbreathing hypersonic vehicles, impacting the design of the aerodynamic, structural, control, and propulsion systems at both the component and multidisciplinary levels. This study aims to expand the fundamental understanding of hypersonic aerothermoelasticity by performing systematic investigations into fluid-thermal-structural coupling. A focus is on the targeted use of simplified coupling procedures in order to abate the computational effort associated with comprehensive aerothermoelastic analysis. Because of the fundamental nature of this work, the analysis is limited to cylindrical bending of a simply supported, von Karman panel. Multiple important effects are included in the analysis: namely, 1) mutual coupling between elastic deformation and aerodynamic heating, 2) transient arbitrary in-plane and through-thickness temperature distributions, and 3) the associated thermal stresses and material property degradations. It is found that including elastic deformations in the aerodynamic heating computations results in nonuniform heat flux, which produces nonuniform temperature distributions and material property degradations. This results in localized regions in which material temperature limits may be exceeded; it also impacts flutter boundary predictions and nonlinear flutter response. Additionally, the tradeoff between computational cost and accuracy is evaluated for aerothermoelastic analysis based on either quasi-static or time-averaged dynamic coupling. It is determined that these approaches offer substantial reductions in computational expense, with negligible loss of accuracy, for aerothermoelastic analysis over long-duration hypersonic trajectories.

Aeroelastic and Aerothermoelastic Analysis in Hypersonic Flow: Past, Present, and Future

H YPERSONIC flight began in February 1949 when a WAC Corporal rocket was ignited from a U.S.-captured V-2 rocket [1]. In the six decades since this milestone, there have been significant investments in the development of hypersonic vehicle technologies. The NASA X-15 rocket plane in the early 1960s represents early research toward this goal [2,3]. After a lull in activity, the modern era of hypersonic research started in the mid-1980s with the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) program [4], aimed at developing a single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicle (RLV) that used conventional runways. However, it was canceled due mainly to design requirements that exceeded the state of the art [1,5]. A more recent RLV project, the VentureStar program, failed during structural tests, again for lack of the required technology [5]. Despite these unsuccessful programs, the continued need for a low-cost RLV, as well as the desire of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) for unmanned hypersonic vehicles, has reinvigorated hypersonic flight research. An emergence of recent and current research programs [6] demonstrate this renewed interest. Consider, for example, the NASA Hyper-X experimental vehicle program [7], the University of Queensland HyShot program [8], the NASA Fundamental Aeronautics Hypersonics Project [9], the joint U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA)/USAF Force Application andLaunch fromContinentalUnited States (FALCON) program [10], the X-51 Single Engine Demonstrator [11,12], the joint USAF Research Laboratory (AFRL)/Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation project [13], and ongoing basic hypersonic research at the AFRL (e.g., [14–20]). The conditions encountered in hypersonic flows, combined with the need to design hypersonic vehicles, have motivated research in the areas of hypersonic aeroelasticity and aerothermoelasticity. It is evident from Fig. 1 that hypersonic vehicle configurations will consist of long, slender lifting body designs. In general, the body, surface panels, and aerodynamic control surfaces are flexible due to minimum-weight restrictions. Furthermore, as shown in Fig. 2, these

Impact of Fluid-Thermal-Structural Coupling on Response Prediction of Hypersonic Skin Panels

DOI: 10.2514/1.J050617 The goal of the United States Air Force to field durable platforms capable of sustained hypersonic flight and responsive access to space depends on the ability to predict the response and the life of structures under combined aerothermal andaeropressure loading. However,current predictive capabilities are limitedfor these conditions due in part to the inability to seamlessly address fluid-thermal-structural interactions. This study aims to quantify the significance of a frequently neglected interaction, namely: the mutual coupling of structural deformation and aerodynamic heating, on response prediction. The quasi-static response of a carbon–carbon skin panel is investigated. It is found that the significance of this coupling depends largely on the in-plane boundary conditions, since increasing resistance to thermal expansion results in buckling and increasing deflections into the flow. Including these deformations in aerodynamic heating results in O10% increase in peak temperature and O100% increase in surface ply failure index for deflections O1% of panel length. In these cases, the locations of peaktemperaturesandstressesaresignificantlyaltered.Finally,neglectingdeformationsintheaeroheatinganalysis results in the prediction of snap-through for a gradual heating trajectory, whereas, inclusion leads to a higher mode dominated, dynamically stable response.

Aeroelastic and Aerothermoelastic Behavior in Hypersonic Flow

The testing of aeroelastically and aerothermoelastically scaled wind-tunnel models in hypersonic flow is not feasible; thus, computational aeroelasticity and aerothermoelasticity are essential to the development of hypersonic vehicles. Several fundamental issues in this area are examined by performing a systematic computational study of the hypersonic aeroelastic and aerothermoelastic behavior of a three-dimensional configuration. Specifically, the flutter boundary of a low-aspect-ratio wing, representative of a fin or control surface on a hypersonic vehicle, is studied over a range of altitudes using third-order piston theory and Euler and Navier-Stokes aerodynamics. The sensitivity of the computational-fluid-dynamics-based aeroelastic analysis to grid resolution and parameters governing temporal accuracy are considered. In general, good agreement at moderate-to-high altitudes was observed for the three aerodynamic models. However, the wing flutters at unrealistic Mach numbers in the absence of aerodynamic heating. Therefore, because aerodynamic heating is an inherent feature of hypersonic flight and the aeroelastic behavior of a vehicle is sensitive to structural variations caused by heating, an aerothermoelastic methodology is developed that incorporates the heat transfer between the fluid and structure based on computational-fluid-dynamics-generated aerodynamic heating. The aerothermoelastic solution procedure is then applied to the low-aspect-ratio wing operating on a representative hypersonic trajectory. In the latter study, the sensitivity of the flutter margin to perturbations in trajectory angle of attack and Mach number is considered. Significant reductions in the flutter boundary of the heated wing are observed. The wing is also found to be susceptible to thermal buckling.

Approximate Modeling of Unsteady Aerodynamics for Hypersonic Aeroelasticity

DOI: 10.2514/1.C000190 Various approximations to unsteady aerodynamics are examined for the aeroelastic analysis of a thin doublewedge airfoil in hypersonic flow. Flutter boundaries are obtained using classical hypersonic unsteady aerodynamic theories: piston theory, Van Dyke’s second-order theory, Newtonian impact theory, and unsteady shock-expansion theory. The theories are evaluated by comparing the flutter boundaries with those predicted using computational fluid dynamics solutions to the unsteady Navier–Stokes equations. Inaddition, several alternative approaches to the classical approximations are also evaluated: two different viscous approximations based on effective shapes and combined approximate computational approaches that use steady-state computational-fluid-dynamics-based surrogatemodelsinconjunction withpistontheory.Theresultsindicatethat,with theexceptionof first-order piston theory and Newtonian impact theory, the approximate theories yield predictions between 3 and 17% of normalized root-mean-square error and between 7 and 40% of normalized maximum error of the unsteady Navier–Stokes predictions. Furthermore, the demonstrated accuracy of the combined steady-state computational fluid dynamics and piston theory approaches suggest that important nonlinearities in hypersonic flow are primarily due to steadystate effects. This implies that steady-state flow analysis may be an alternative to time-accurate Navier–Stokes solutions for capturing complex flow effects.

Reduced-Order Aerothermoelastic Framework for Hypersonic Vehicle Control Simulation

Hypersonic vehicle control system design and simulation require models that contain a low number of states. Modeling of hypersonic vehicles is complicated due to complex interactions between aerodynamic heating, heat transfer, structural dynamics, and aerodynamics. Although there exist techniques for analyzing the effects of each of the various disciplines, thesemethods often require solution of large systems of equations, which is infeasible within a control design and evaluation environment. This work presents an aerothermoelastic framework with reducedorder aerothermal, heat transfer, and structural dynamicmodels for time-domain simulation of hypersonic vehicles. Details of the reduced-order models are given, and a representative hypersonic vehicle control surface used for the study is described. Themethodology is applied to a representative structure to provide insight into the importance of aerothermoelastic effects on vehicle performance. The effect of aerothermoelasticity on total lift and drag is found to result in up to an 8% change in lift and a 21% change in drag with respect to a rigid control surface for the four trajectories considered. An iterative routine is used to determine the angle of attack needed to match the lift of the deformed control surface to that of a rigid one at successive time instants.Application of the routine todifferent cruise trajectories shows a maximum departure from the initial angle of attack of 8%.

Flutter Boundary Identification for Time-Domain Computational Aeroelasticity

Three time-domain damping/frequency/flutter identification techniques are discussed; namely, the moving-block approach, the least-squares curve-fitting method, and a system-identification technique using an autoregressive moving-average model of the aeroelastic system. These methods are evaluated for use with time-intensive computational aeroelastic simulations, represented by the aeroelastic transient responses of a double-wedge airfoil and three-dimensional wing in hypersonic flow. The responses are generated using the NASA Langley CFL3D computational aeroelastic code, in which the aerodynamic loads are computed from the unsteady Navier-Stokes equations. In general, the methods agree well. The system-identification technique, however, provided quick damping and frequency estimates with minimal response-record length. In the present case, the computational cost required to generate each aeroelastic transient was reduced by 75%. Finally, a flutter margin for discrete-time systems, constructed using the autoregressive moving-average approach, is evaluated for use in the hypersonic flow regime for the first time. For the binary-mode case, the flutter margin exhibited a linear correlation with dynamic pressure, minimizing the number of responses required to locate flutter. However, the flutter margin was not linear for the multimode system, indicating that it does not perform as expected in all cases.

Model Reduction of Computational Aerothermodynamics for Hypersonic Aerothermoelasticity

A primary challenge for aerothermoelastic analysis in hypersonic flow is accurate and efficient computation of unsteady aerothermodynamic loads. This study examines two model reduction strategies with the goal to enable the use of computational fluid dynamics within a long time-record, dynamic, aerothermoelastic analysis. One approach seeks to exploit the quasi-steady nature of the flow by using steady-state computational fluid dynamics to capture primary flow features, and simple analytical approximations to account for unsteady effects. The second approach seeks to minimize the computational cost of steady-state computational fluid dynamics flow analysis using either kriging or proper orthogonal decomposition-based modeling techniques. These model reduction strategies are assessed, both individually and combined, in the context of a three-dimensional hypersonic control surface. Results computed over a wide range of operating conditions and reduced frequencies indicate that when combined, the considered approaches yield an aerothermodynamic model that is tractable within a dynamic aerothermoelastic analysis, and generally has less than 5% maximum error relative to computational fluid dynamics.

Uncertainty Propagation in Hypersonic Aerothermoelastic Analysis

This study sets the framework for uncertainty propagation in hypersonic aeroelastic and aerothermoelastic stability analyses. First, the aeroelastic stability of typical hypersonic control surface section is considered. Variability in the uncoupled natural frequencies of the system are modeled using beta probability distributions. Uncertainty is propagated to the

Hypersonic Aerothermoelastic Studies for Reusable Launch Vehicles

An aeroelastic and aerothermoelastic analysis of a three-dimensional low aspect ratio wing, representative of a fin on hypersonic vehicles, is carried out using piston theory, and Euler aerodynamics. Studies on grid convergence are used to determine the appropriate computational domain and resolution for this wing in hypersonic flow, using both Euler and Navier-Stokes aerodynamics. Hypersonic computational aeroelastic responses are then generated, using Euler aerodynamics in order to obtain frequency and damping characteristics for comparison with those from first and third order piston theory solutions. Results indicate that the aeroelastic behavior is comparable when using Euler and third order piston theory aerodynamics. The transonic aeroelastic behavior of the wing is also analyzed using Euler aerodynamics. The aerothermoelastic behavior of the wing, using piston theory aerodynamics, is studied by incorporating material property degradation and thermal stresses due to non-uniform temperature distributions. Results indicate that aerodynamic heating can substantially reduce aeroelastic stability. Finally, hypersonic aeroelastic behavior of a generic vehicle resembling a reusable launch vehicle is performed using piston theory. The results presented serve as a partial validation of the CFL3D code for the hypersonic flight regime.