Aircraft T-tail flutter predictions using computational fluid dynamics

The paper presents the application of computational aeroelasticity (CA) methods to the analysis of a T-tail stability in transonic regime. For this flow condition unsteady aerodynamics show a significant dependency from the aircraft equilibrium flight configuration, which rules both the position of shock waves in the flow field and the load distribution on the horizontal tail plane. Both these elements have an influence on the aerodynamic forces, and so on the aeroelastic stability of the system. The numerical procedure proposed allows to investigate flutter stability for a free-flying aircraft, iterating until convergence the following sequence of sub-problems: search for the trimmed condition for the deformable aircraft; linearize the system about the stated equilibrium point; predict the aeroelastic stability boundaries using the inferred linear model. An innovative approach based on sliding meshes allows to represent the changes of the computational fluid domain due to the motion of control surfaces used to trim the aircraft. To highlight the importance of keeping the linear model always aligned to the trim condition, and at the same time the capabilities of the computational fluid dynamics approach, the method is applied to a real aircraft with a T-tail configuration: the P180.