Aircraft Loads Characteristics Determined by System Identification and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition of CFD Simulations

A method is described to decompose spatial-temporal surface data from a maneuvering aircraft into a set of orthonormal modes in the spatial coordinate, and a set of time series of coefficients for those modes. The coefficient time histories can be modeled as polynomials of t he active flight parameters. Using the orthonormal modes and a new set of flight parameter time series a new set of s urface pressure series can be generated. This dramatically reduces the computational time required to generate surface data for a maneuver when compared to running a new CFD simulation. This method is used on a test case of a pitching and rolling wing and an F16 in a complex maneuver.