Adjustments and Uncertainty Quantification for SLS Aerodynamic Sectional Loads

This paper presents a method for adjusting sectional loads to match target values for integrated force and moment coefficients. In a typical application, the sectional load profile for one flight condition is calculated from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) while the integrated forces and moments are measured in a wind tunnel experiment. These two methods do not generally result in identical predictions, and this leads to an inherent inconsistency between different data products. This paper aims to provide a procedure to remove that inconsistency. A sectional load profile for a launch vehicle splits the rocket into slices along its length and calculates the aerodynamic loading on each slice, which leads to a one-dimensional aerodynamic load profile that is used for structural analysis. Adjusting sectional loads, also known as line loads, is a nontrivial matter due to several consistency constraints. For example, the adjusted sectional normal force profile must be consistent with both the integrated normal force and pitching moment. To avoid such inconsistency issues, this paper presents a method using a Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) to generate basis functions to adjust the sectional load profiles. As a corollary, this correction method enables the creation of an uncertainty quantification for sectional loads that is consistent with the dispersed integrated force and moment database and its uncertainty quantification. Several extensions to this technique, such as applying the method to the surface pressures, are considered.