Numerical Simulation of Unsteady Aerodynamic Loads over an Aerofoil in Transonic Flow

The unsteady aerodynamic loads are the basic of the aeroelasitc. This paper focuses on the computation of the unsteady aerodynamic loads for forced periodic motions under high subsonic Mach numbers. The flow is modeled using the Euler equations and an unsteady time-domain solver is used for the computation of aerodynamic loads for forced periodic motions. The Euler equations are discretized on curvilinear multi-block body conforming girds using a cell-centred finite volume method. The implicit dual-time method proposed by Jameson is used for time-accurate calculations. Rigid body motions were treated by moving the mesh rigidly in response to the applied sinusoidal motion. For NACA 0012 airfoil, a validation of the unsteady aerodynamics loads is first considered. Furthermore, a study for understanding the influence of motion parameters, the Mach number, mean angle of incidence, reduced frequency, amplitude, was also conducted. A reverse of the trend of hysteretic loops can be observed with the increasing of the Mach number. Nonlinear hysteretic loops are turned up when increasing the amplitude and the reduced frequency during the applied pitch sinusoidal motion.