An elasticity-based mesh scheme applied to the computation of unsteady three-dimensional spoiler and aeroelastic problems

This paper presents a modification of the spring analogy scheme which uses axial linear spring stiffness with selective spring stiffening/relaxation. An alternate approach to solving the geometric conservation law is taken which eleminates the need for storage of metric Jacobians at previous time steps. Efficiency and verification are illustrated with several unsteady 2-D airfoil Euler computations. The method is next applied to the computation of the turbulent flow about a 2-D airfoil and wing with two and three dimensional moving spoiler surfaces, and the results compared with Benchmark Active Controls Technology (BACT) experimental data. The aeroelastic response at low dynamic pressure of an airfoil to a single large scale oscillation of a spoiler surface is computed. This study confirms that it is possible to achieve accurate solutions with a very large time step for aeroelastic problems using the fluid solver and aeroelastic integrator as discussed in this paper.