Novel Volume of Solid Technology for Nonlinear Aeroelastic Stability Analysis

Morphing technology enables aerospace vehicles to achieve a broader range of operational modes. Computational aeroelastic and design analysis tools of these vehicles must be able to handle arbitrarily large deformations and shape changes. The objective of this study is to improve aircraft performance, expand its flight envelope, replace conventional control surfaces, reduce drag, and reduce vibration/flutter by morphing technology. This paper presents a revolutionary approach to solve aeroelastic instabilities of air vehicles undergoing large deformation and arbitrarily large shape change. The technology was implemented in a CFD code and demonstrated for several solid-fluid interaction and morphing telescope wing problems. This innovative technology casts structure/body-dynamics equations in an Eulerian reference frame, so that the dependent variables for the fluid and solids are continuous and coupled. The volume of solid tracks the evolution of solid-fluid interface, while implicit formulation embeds the interaction forces into the solution procedure. The method is devoid of troublesome moving mesh or tedious grid regeneration issues. The developed technology will provide the lacking design and analysis capability in conceptualizing how vehicles should safely change shape during flight.