A CFD/CTD/CSD based aero-thermo-elastic framework for full-vehicle scale analysis

Due to the significant multidisciplinary coupling mechanism inherent in hypersonic flight mission, unnecessary and wasteful trade-off in vehicle performance will be cost if complex load distribution and aerodynamic heating effect are neglected at the early stage of design. This paper establishes an CFD/CTD/CSD based aero-thermo-elastic framework for analysis of the full-vehicle scale. The loose coupling strategy is chosen in this framework to reveal the specific efforts of each disciplinary, and the RBF-TFI method is introduced for mesh deformation. This study is carried on the rudders assembled on a hypersonic missile, with the high-fidelity aerodynamic data of the full-vehicle model extracted by CFD and only the component deformation of the rudders extracted by FEM. This paper demonstrates the aero-thermo-elastic effects of those factors concealed by engineering algorithms, with the influence mechanism revealed from the results discussed.