ZEUS is ZONA’s Euler Unsteady Aerodynamic Solver that integrates the essential disciplines required for aeroelastic design/analysis. It uses an Euler equation solver as the underlying aerodynamic force generator coupled with structural finite element modal solution to solve various aeroelastic problem such as flutter, maneuver loads, gust loads, and static aeroelastic/trim analysis. Structural nonlinearities can also be included to perform a nonlinear aeroelastic analysis.

The Euler equation solver solves the Euler equations on a Cartesian grid system using a cell-centered finite volume method with dual-time stepping algorithm for unsteady solutions. The viscous effects are included by coupling the Euler solution with a steady boundary-layer equation. For turbulence closure, the Green’s lag entrainment is employed. Because of solving the Euler equations with boundary layer coupling, the requirement of large computing resources by a Navier-Stokes code can be avoided by ZEUS. Therefore, ZEUS provides a good balance between the complete modeling of the flow physics and the computational efficiency.

Some ZEUS highlights:

• Incorporates a robust/fully automated mesh generation scheme making the input setup to ZEUS as simple as that of ZAERO. NO MORE MANAUL MESH SET UPS!
• Includes an overset mesh generation option so that different aircraft components (e.g., stores) can be set up within their own automated mesh.
• Uses a state-of-the-art Euler solver as the underlying aerodynamic force generator (with or without boundary layer coupling).
• Supports the following unsteady aerodynamic computations: (1) Time-Domain, (2) Frequency-Domain, (3) Pseudo time-domain, (4) Steady aerodynamics for rigid aircraft, and (5) Discrete Gust.
• Incorporates a High Fidelity Geometry Module (same as ZAERO's)
• Incorporates a robust 3D spline module (same as ZAERO's)
• Utilizies ZONA's Dynamic Database and Memory Managements System
• Includes the following engineering modules: (1) Flutter, (2) Maneuver Loads, (3) Gust Loads, (4) Nonlinear Flutter, (5) Trim, and (6) frequency-domain generalized aerodynamic force generator.