Reduced-order fluid/structure modeling of a complete aircraft configuration

The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method is applied to the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based reduced-order aeroelastic modeling of a complete F-16 fighter configuration, in order to assess its potential for the solution of realistic aeroelastic problems. The limitation of such a computational approach to a fixed free-stream Mach number is addressed by a Mach-adaptation strategy that interpolates the angle between two POD subspaces rather than the POD basis vectors directly. The predicted aeroelastic frequencies and damping ratio coefficients are compared with counterparts obtained from full-order nonlinear simulations and from flight test data. The results of these comparisons, including in the transonic regime, reveal a good potential of POD-based reduced-order modeling for the near real-time prediction of aircraft flutter using CFD technology.