Transonic Aeroelastic Flutter Computations With Mesh Adaptation

This paper considers multiscale mesh adaptation of aeroelastic wing structures in transonic flow. Workflows are developed which allow for high fidelity static aeroelastic equilibrium conditions, and the matched-point dynamic aeroelastic flutter mechanism, to evolve alongside the mesh adaptation mechanics, via a staggered procedure. Rather than enforcing static equilibrium or matched-point constraints for a given mesh, these conditions are allowed to be more gradually met across the mesh adaptation process. These cost-effective workflows are successfully demonstrated for a wing-body semispan wind tunnel model. For this configuration, the results show substantial interdependencies between the mesh-adapted static and dynamic aeroelastic physics.