03.1 - Aerodynamics – CFD Methods and Validation

HIGH-FIDELITY ANALYSIS OF AIRCRAFT TAIL BUFFETING UNDER DYNAMIC MANEUVERING

M.R. Rajanna¹, J. Lua¹, N. Phan, Naval Air System Command, United States; M.-C. Hsu, Iowa State University, United States; ¹Global Engineering and Materials, Inc., United States

This paper aims to investigate and validate a new stabilized compressible-flow finite element framework for coupled aeroelastic simulation of aircraft tail buffeting under maneuvering conditions. The framework comprises streamline upwind/Petrov–Galerkin (SUPG)–based Navier–Stokes equations for compressible flow, weakly enforced essential boundary conditions that act as a wall function, and an entropy-based discontinuity-capturing formulation that serves as a shock-capturing operator. The developed stabilized finite element–based compressible-flow fluid–structure interaction (FSI) approach is implemented within an arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) framework, enabling rigid-body motion of the aircraft model. Aircraft forward velocity, Euler angles, and body angular rates are used to update the mesh motion in the ALE framework, allowing accurate replication of dynamic maneuvers. A component-level validation study is performed using flow over a NACA 0012 airfoil. Simulations of the NASA Common Research Model (CRM) aircraft are then conducted to investigate tail buffeting using time-dependent maneuver data. A simple wind-up turn maneuver is simulated to demonstrate the modeling framework and to capture the structural response of the horizontal stabilizer of the NASA CRM model induced by buffeting loads.

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DOI: 10.71945/icas2026_0927