Unsteady Vortex Lattice Method in Tornado: A Fast and Cost-Effective Solver for Dynamic Analysis of Supersonic Lifting Surfaces

This study details the development of the Unsteady Vortex Lattice Method (VLM) in conjunction with the MATLAB based Tornado VLM software, aiming to enhance the capabilities of Tornado for unsteady analysis. This integration allows for improved accuracy and computational efficiency in predicting the dynamic behaviour of such surfaces. The following work is based on the frequency response of the generalised VLM that effectively removes the cost associated with higher-order computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers. The solver works on the framework of adaptive time-step response and reduces the truncation error improving the accuracy. This unsteady solver computes the induced flow to calculate the forces acting on the panel concerning time. This unsteady VLM is a fast mode of solver for predicting the dynamic behaviour of a lifting surface which enables its use in quicker preliminary design analysis. The results were compared with conventional CFD simulation and have seen a comparable accuracy for reduced run time. Being a lower-order method, the solver is 24 times faster than the CFD simulation, which reduces the cost associated and computational power requirement.