Modeling fluid structure interaction with shape memory alloy actuated morphing aerostructures
The development of efficient and accurate analysis techniques for morphing aerostructures incorporating shape memory alloys (SMAs) continues to garner attention. These active materials have a high actuation energy density, making them an ideal replacement for conventional actuation mechanisms in morphing structures. However, SMA components are often exposed to the same highly variable environments experienced by the aeroelastic assemblies into which they are incorporated. This is motivating design engineers to consider modeling fluidstructure interaction for prescribing dynamic, solution-dependent boundary conditions. This work presents a computational study of a particular morphing aerostructure with embedded, thermally actuating SMA ribbons and demonstrates the effective use of fluid-structure interaction modeling. A cosimulation analysis is utilized to determine the surface deflections and stress distributions of an example aerostructure with embedded SMA ribbons using the Abaqus Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software suite, combined with an Abaqus Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) processor. The global FEA solver utilizes a robust user-defined material subroutine which contains an accurate three-dimensional SMA constitutive model. Variations in the ambient fluid environment are computed using the CFD solver, and fluid pressure is mapped into surface distributed loads. Results from the analysis are qualitatively validated with independently obtained data from representative flow tests previously conducted on a physical prototype of the same aerostructure.