Advanced UAV Aerodynamics, Flight Stability and Control

15 Virtual Flight Simulation using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Ubaidullah Akram¹, Marco Cristofaro² and Andrea Da Ronch³

¹ Lockheed Martin Commercial Flight Training, Sassenheim, the Netherlands

² AVL List GmbH, Graz, Austria

³ University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

The aim of this chapter is to present recent advances in the development of high‐fidelity simulation software for virtual flight testing of unconventional and next‐generation aircraft. The accurate and efficient simulation of the full set of physics associated with aircraft flight operations, including flight control, aerodynamics and structural dynamics, is discussed. Pivotal to this framework is a novel adaptive design of experimental algorithms for the rapid generation of the aerodynamic database. This is developed and demonstrated on a complete aircraft with highly non‐linear aerodynamics. Throughout the chapter, several examples and problems are introduced to aid the reader to gain competence and proficiency in the methods and computer codes accompanying this chapter.

Section 15.1 overviews the state of the art of virtual flight simulation. Section 15.2 is a discussion of the aerodynamic model traditionally used for flight simulation. Then, surrogate modelling and adaptive design of experiment are developed in Section 15.3. Finally, advanced models used for virtual flight simulation are presented in Section 15.4.

15.1 Introduction

Many aspects of the detailed stages of aircraft design demand ...