Development and Validation of an Unsteady Panel Code to Model Airfoil Aeromechanical Response

Abstract

An unsteady panel code has been developed as a computational tool to investigate the influence of aerodynamic damping on airfoil aeromechanical response. The inclusion of a freestream gust model enables the panel code to simulate freestream gust perturbations of arbitrary shape and magnitude. The inclusion of a two degree of freedom structural model also enables the panel code to model structural response due to both self-induced and gust-induced aerodynamic forcing. Together, the gust and structural models allow aeromechanical response to be modeled. Panel code solutions compared favorably to classic problems in unsteady aerodynamics, however, panel code solutions utilizing the freestream gust model show a significant dependence on freestream gust model parameters and gust discretization. Aeromechanical response was demonstrated using the panel code, however, further refinement of the gust model is necessary prior to application of the panel code to investigations of interest.