Browsing by Author "Eldred, Lloyd B."

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    Sensitivity analysis of the static aeroelastic response of a wing
    Eldred, Lloyd B. (Virginia Tech, 1993-02-05)
    A technique to obtain the sensitivity of the static aeroelastic response of a three dimensional wing model is designed and implemented. The formulation is quite general and accepts any aerodynamic and structural analysis capability. A program to combine the discipline level, or local, sensitivities into global sensitivity derivatives is developed. A variety of representations of the wing pressure field are developed and tested to determine the most accurate and efficient scheme for representing the field outside of the aerodynamic code. Chebyshev polynomials are used to globally fit the pressure field. This approach had some difficulties in representing local variations in the field, so a variety of local interpolation polynomial pressure representations are also implemented. These panel based representations use a constant pressure value~ a bilinearly interpolated value, or a biquadratic ally interpolated value. The interpolation polynomial approaches do an excellent job of reducing the numerical problems of the global approach for comparable computational effort. Regardless of the pressure representation used, sensitivity and response results with excellent accuracy have been produced for large integrated quantities such as wing tip deflection and trim angle of attack. The sensitivities of such things as individual generalized displacements have been found with fair accuracy. In general, accuracy is found to be proportional to the relative size of the derivatives to the quantity itself.
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    Solution of non-linear partial differential equations with the Chebyshev Spectral method
    Eldred, Lloyd B. (Virginia Tech, 1989-10-15)
    The Spectral method is a powerful numerical technique for solving engineering differential equations. The method is a specialization of the method of weighted residuals. Trial functions that are easily and exactly differentiable are used. Often the functions used also satisfy an orthogonality equation, which can improve the efficiency of the approximation. Generally, the entire domain is modeled, but multiple sub-domains may be used. A Chebyshev-Collocation Spectral method is used to solve a variety of ordinary and partial differential equations. The Chebyshev Polynomial series follows a well established recursion relation for calculation of the polynomials and their derivatives. Two different schemes are studied for formulation of the problems, a Fast Fourier Transform approach, and a matrix multiplication approach. First, the one-dimensional ordinary differential equation representing the deflection of a tapered bar under its own weight is studied. Next, the two dimensional Poisson's equation is examined. Lastly, a two dimensional, highly non-linear, two parameter Bratu's equation is solved. Each problem's results are compared to results from other methods or published data. Accuracy is very good, with a significant improvement in computer time.