DARcorporation engineers have the capability to model and simulate aircraft external installations (e.g., radomes and stores) in various flow regimes including subsonic and transonic. Also modeled are both steady and unsteady flow characteristics to explore loads and the fluctuation of loads.

A generic radome antenna system on a twin engine aircraft is shown as an example for analyzing the unsteady flow behavior and potential flow separation. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the radome/antenna provides detailed pressure distribution. The unsteady vortex shedding is captured by the vorticity and streamline plots. The frequency and the magnitude of the flow fluctuation are predicted in CFD to help with structural analysis to guide potential material fatigue and controllability analyses, thus providing higher confidence in the radome/antenna integration to the aircraft.