Comparison of frequency and time domain methods for aeromechanical analysis

Unsteady flow around an oscillating plate cascade and that through a single compressor rotor subject to vibration have been computationally studied, aimed at examining the predictive ability of two low fidelity frequency methods compared with a high fidelity time-domain solution method for aeroelasticity. The computational solutions demonstrate the capabilities of the frequency domain methods compared with the nonlinear time-domain solution method in capturing small perturbations in the unsteady flow. They also show the great advantage of significant CPU time saving by the frequency methods over the nonlinear time method. Comparisons of two different frequency methods, nonlinear harmonic and phase solution method, show that these methods can produce different results due to the differences in numeric and physical conditioning. The results obtained using phase solutions method are in better agreement with the nonlinear time-domain solution. This is because the same numeric and physical conditioning are used in both the nonlinear time-domain method and phase solution frequency domain method.