Vortex Lattice Method for calculating aerodynamics of aircraft in X-Plane

Question

I recently purchased X-plane 11 and have been having a great time flying around with it. I've been in the aerospace industry for a few years as a structural engineer and more recently working in the field of aeroelasticity and flying X-plane 11 made me realize how a method like vortex lattice could be used to calculate the steady aerodynamics of the aircraft and hopefully give the whole simulation engine a little more realism which is why all of us are here for.

Something to think about for the future would be to calculate the unsteady aerodynamics with other tools like Zona's ZAERO or NASTRAN and couple that with a simple structural model of the aircraft and be able to predict a flutter speed/mechanism and potentially make the airplane flutter/buffet/oscillate in the air as it comes close to its limit speed. This is something I have never seen done in a flight simulator since I started flying around with MS Flight Simulator 4.

I would be willing to help out on my spare time since i think this would be a cool challenge.

Thank you,

Andres N.

Answer 1

If you would like to get in touch with Austin Meyer, who is in charge of most of the flight model code, please send me a private message with your email address and I will forward it along with this offer. He might be interested in discussing these ideas.