Aeroelasticity Final Year Project CFD FSI options

Andrew Ratcliffe

Hi,

I am a fourth year Aerospace study about to start a final year project on Aeroelasticity. I have access to ANSYS and Fluent, but the version of ANSYS available does not have the FSI solution. Therefore I will have to do CFD modelling of the structure than transpose the pressure distributions into a Structural FE analysis using ANSYS. The little experience I have had with Fluent has led me to get frustrated with the interface, and am seeking an alternative. ANSYS Flotran exists but I have found little literature currently using it, so I am unsure on its strengths, and whether it is strong enough to perform the analysis I want it to. The vehicle I am analysing is slow moving, and small, therefore the loads on the wing and structure I will be investigating are not large, typical free stream velocity of 12 - 15 m/s. Is Flotran suitable for this analysis or do I need to use something else? What are the strengths of Fluent and ANSYS CFX over Flotran? I will need to perform 3D analysis of wings, how would I create a 3D wing in ANSYS? how do I directly create this in ANSYS? ie import the airfoil coordinates and extrude? and how shall I define the elements to be used? or shall I create the wing in a CAD program and import it in? For future reference is there a way to take the 2D airfoil coordinates provided by UIUC and import them into ANSYS as keypoints?

Thank you for your time,

Andrew Ratcliffe