PhD Studentship: Computational Aeroelasticity for Next-generation Aircraft

  Aerodynamics & Flight Mechanics Research Group Location:  Highfield Campus
Closing Date:   Wednesday 01 June 2016
Interview Date:  
Reference:  585015AK
Project Reference: AACE-AFM-140 Project Themes:  Fluid Dynamics, Computational Engineering, Energy and Climate Change, Materials and Surface Engineering, Mechatronics Signal Processing and Control, Structures & Solid Mechanics, Transportation and Water and Environment.  

The impact of aviation on the environment and the communities around airports is under scrutiny as never before. A substantial change in current design procedures is needed to manufacture cleaner, quieter, and safer aircraft to meet the ever increasing demand, and progress in more efficient engines is no longer sufficient.

The current industrial design process is based on linear assumptions, and this has been accepted as a means of compliance for generating gust and manoeuvre loads for aircraft design by certification authorities. Neglecting nonlinear characteristics, that may dominate the structural response and the flow development, results in conservative designs. This project targets this gap, and aims at developing a procedure to compute accurately manoeuvre and gust loads with well validated examples.

The project will provide an innovative nonlinear aeroelastic solution to lead to optimised models resulting in reduced uncertainties in the predictions which, in turn, lead to weight and cost savings. The project will include: an efficient loosely coupled aeroelastic solution process where all the CFD loads are transferred to the structural model through an advanced interpolation technique; a robust, conservative, and mesh-free procedure to deform the volume CFD mesh; and an efficient time-marching scheme to allow unsteady solutions to be performed at manageable costs.

The project capitalises from collaboration with two-leading industrial partners. The successful student is expected to visit and spend time at the partners’ sites.

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Dr Andrea Da Ronch, Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics research group, Email: A.Da-Ronch@soton.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 2380 59 4787.

To apply please use the following link http://www.southampton.ac.uk/engineering/postgraduate/research_degrees/apply.page? and select Faculty of Engineering and the Environment.