Response Surface Modeling of Aerodynamic Interference Effects for Refueling Scenarios

Aerial refueling is a mission-critical component of Navy operations. Refueling is made difficult by the interference between the tanker and receiver aircraft. The receiver aircraft may experience various forms of disturbances during approach, stressing the skills of a pilot or the control system of an autonomous vehicle. Current flight simulation capabilities are unable to reproduce the impact of the complex tanker wake on the receiver aircraft. The proposed research will develop and implement a Modeling and Simulation (M&S) toolkit that may be incorporated into the CASTLE simulation environment for simulating incremental changes in the forces and moments of the receiver aircraft as it approaches the tanker during typical refueling scenarios. Through high fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) predictions, Response Surface Models will be developed to encompass the complex wake effects on the receiver aerodynamic coefficients as a low order polynomial. This approach provides an analytic representation of system behavior that may be quickly interrogated for use in real time flight simulation. The proposed program will further mature and apply the RSM methodology for different tanker/receiver configurations, and incorporate the models into Aerodynamic Interference Modules (AIMs) for integration with CASTLE. Validation of the methods will incorporate flight data and pilot feedback.