Unsteady aerodynamic reduced-order modeling of an aeroelastic wing using arbitrary mode shapes

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based unsteady aerodynamic reduced-order model (ROM) can offer significant improvements to the efficiency of transonic aeroelastic analysis. To construct a ROM based on mode shapes, one run of CFD solver is needed to compute aerodynamic responses corresponding to mode excitations. When mode shapes change with structure, another run of the CFD solver is required to construct the new ROM. The typically large computational cost associated with repeated runs of the CFD solver impedes the application of existing unsteady aerodynamic reduced-order modeling methods to transonic aeroelastic design optimization and aeroelastic uncertainty analysis. This paper demonstrates a method that can replace the CFD solver used in the process of existing unsteady aerodynamic reduced-order modeling. It can produce aerodynamic responses corresponding to mode excitations for arbitrary mode shapes within a few seconds. Computational cost can be reduced by two orders of magnitude using the mode excitations and the corresponding aerodynamic responses computed by the method to construct the ROMs used for flutter analyses in aeroelastic design optimization or aeroelastic uncertainty analysis in transonic regime compared with the existing unsteady aerodynamic reduced-order modeling methods. Results show that the method can accurately produce the aerodynamic responses corresponding to the mode excitations and predict the flutter characteristics of AGARD 445.6 wings root-attached in three different ways.