Extension of an Aeroelastic Coupling Environment to Aircraft Configurations with Rigid-Body Degrees of Freedom

An existing aeroelastic coupling environment originally developed for the simulation of constrained configurations without rigid-body degrees of freedom and its extension to the steady and unsteady simulation of configurations with rigid-body degrees of freedom is presented. Since a partitioned approach is employed, the rigid-body motion is realised by means of an additional solver. For steady flight, controls have to be actuated by a trim algorithm in order to achieve an equilibrium flight state. During unsteady simulations, the rigid-body motion is integrated in time. It generates additional coupling effects, especially with the structural deformation. The theoretical background of the single-field solvers as well as the data exchange between them is outlined, and first steady coupled results are shown.