Higher Fidelity Transonic Aerodynamic Modeling in Preliminary Aircraft Design

There is a consensus in the aerospace research community that future aircraft will be more flex- ible and their wings will be more highly loaded. While this development is likely to increase air- craft efficiency, it poses several aeroelastic ques- tions. Current aeroelastic tailoring practice for early preliminary aircraft design relies on linear aerodynamic modeling, which is unable to pre- dict shocks and boundary layers. The objective of this research is to enhance the linear aerodynamic modeling methodology, thus allowing fast and re- liable aerodynamic loads prediction for aeroelas- tic computations. First, the different levels of fi- delity of aerodynamic modeling that can be used in aircraft design are reviewed and compared on benchmark test cases. A Field Panel Method is subsequently developed and implemented. Pre- liminary results are presented and possible future enhancements are detailed.