Store Separation

Many military aircraft carry external fuel stores to extend their flight range during combat operations or for non-combat ferry flights. During combat operations, it is standard practice to jettison external fuel tanks when depleted or prior to entering active combat. The jettison or store separation process is inherently dangerous as the chance of an errant strike is high, ultimately leading to catastrophic failure. The traditional approach to qualification is to rely heavily on flight testing, but that is a costly and potentially life threatening ​process. 

​

The combination of motion (six degree of freedom or 6DOF) solvers with CFD methods allow for the use of digital simulation to rapidly and safely understand how stores separate under a myriad of conditions. 

​

This simulation was run using Ansys Fluent and utilized overset (chimera) meshing to allow for the motion of the store. The results were post processed in Ansys Ensight.