An aerodynamic analysis tool for aircraft conceptual design at full speed range

For fast and automatic aerodynamic computation in unconventional aircraft conceptual design, a full-automatic aerodynamic analysis tool for arbitrary Mach number flow was developed in this paper. This tool consists of three methods for three individual Mach number ranges:1) A finite volume full potential method on adaptive Cartesian grids for subsonic and transonic flow; 2) A finite volume Euler method on adaptive Cartesian grids for supersonic flow; 3) An empirical panel method based on local surface inclination methods for hypersonic flow. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method are validated by several typical cases of different flows around ONERA M6 wing, DLR-F4 wing-body, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a blended wing body (BWB), HL-20 lifting-body, and AS-202 capsule. The validation cases demonstrate a fast computation convergence with fully automatic grid treatment, and the results confirm the capacity of the present method in applications for unconventional aircraft conceptual design in a wide range of Mach numbers.