Calibration of aero-structural reduced order models using full-field experimental measurements

The structural response of hypersonic aircraft panels is a multi-disciplinary problem, where the nonlinear structural dynamics, aerodynamics, and heat transfer models are coupled. A clear understanding of the impact of high-speed flow effects on the structural response, and the potential influence of the structure on the local environment, is needed in order to prevent the design of overly-conservative structures, a common problem in past hypersonic programs. The current work investigates these challenges from a structures perspective. To this end, the first part of this investigation looks at the modeling of the response of a rectangular panel to an external heating source (thermo-structural coupling) where the temperature effect on the structure is obtained from forward looking infrared (FLIR) measurements and the displacement via 3D-digital image correlation (DIC). The second part of the study uses data from a previous series of wind-tunnel experiments, performed to investigate the response of a compliant panel to the effects of high-speed flow, to train a pressure surrogate model. In this case, the panel aero-loading is obtained from fast-response pressure sensitive paint (PSP) measurements, both directly and from the pressure surrogate model. The result of this investigation is the use of full-field experimental measurements to update the structural model and train a computational efficient model of the loading environment. The use of reduced order models, informed by these full-field physical measurements, is a significant step toward the development of accurate simulation models of complex structures that are computationally tractable.