Publications

Inverse methods for identifying pressure loading on aerospace vehicles using structural response

Coffin, Peter C.; Dennard, Carlie; Pham, Julie

Accelerometers are commonly installed on aerospace vehicles to monitor structural response. Robust ways of identifying the fluid pressure loading associated with those measurements would be useful in understanding the fundamental environments the vehicle is being exposed to during operation. A study is performed to compare multiple inverse methods for their applicability to identify fluid pressure loading of a slender conical structure subject to hypersonic flow in a wind tunnel. The wind tunnel experiment consists of a structure with an instrumented, thin, flexible panel that was excited by the turbulent boundary layer. The turbulent loading was measured using multiple types of pressure sensors. To limit the number of unknowns and ensure a well-posed problem, the first inverse method demonstrated consists of a random vibration analysis computed in the frequency domain and subject to a parameter-ized pressure distribution. The second approach is a generic force identification of pressures in the time domain. In the study, the influence of the methods on the characteristics of the identified pressures are discussed as well as the computational costs and implementational considerations.