Low Speed Aerodynamic Modeling for Control-related Considerations in Supersonic Aircraft Design

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-2531.vid The design optimization of a supersonic transport aircraft should account for low speed flight considerations as a part of the constraints to be satisfied. In particular, the initial climbing and final descent should be protected from violating angle-of-attack limits in the presence of disturbances (gust). To support the integration of these kinds of control-dependent constraints into the design optimization process, an aerodynamic model at an appropriate level of fidelity and computational complexity is needed. This paper describes the creation of such a control design-oriented model to be used in future supersonic design problems, and its integration with the University of Michigan's High Speed Vehicle (UM/HSV) framework to simulate the flight mechanics behavior of the aircraft during low-speed flight. The model is suitably parameterized while capturing the main physical features of the complex vortex state at high angles of attack. A surrogate model based on polynomial chaos expansion is created from a reference vortex lattice method. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify the most significant parameters that impact the controllability of the vehicle.