Control-oriented aerothermoelastic modeling approaches for hypersonic vehicles

The field of aerothermoelasticity is essential for control-oriented modeling of hypersonic vehicles due to a high degree of coupling between vehicle systems, as well as the presence of aerodynamic heating. In the present study, an efficient aerothermoelastic model is investigated in two ways. First, an approximate aerodynamic heating model is verified using Computational Fluid Dynamic flow analysis. Next, the model is used to gain insight into the degree of coupling between the aerothermal and aeroelastic systems. Results demonstrate that both material property degradation and two-way coupling are important for control-oriented aerothermoelastic modeling. Furthermore, quasi-static and dynamic average approaches for fluid-thermal-structural coupling offer an accurate and efficient approximation for implementing two-way coupling.