Patent ID: 8249843

Claim:
A method for predicting aerodynamic impact on the performance of an aircraft for a small appendage on an aircraft by providing an aerodynamic load predictor for the load associated with the small appendage with a computational accuracy better than 0.5% with the small appendage being defined as an appendage whose impact on the aerodynamic load on the aircraft is less than 1%, comprising the steps of using an adaptable computational fluid dynamic model of airflow to model and evaluate a region adjacent the small appendage by: isolating a patch surrounding the small appendage; running a computational fluid dynamic model analysis on the patch without the small appendage in place to provide analysis results; running a computational fluid dynamic model analysis on the patch with the small appendage in place to provide analysis results; and, subtracting the analysis results of the patch without the appendage from the analysis results of the patch with the appendage in place to increase computational accuracy of the load predictions for the small appendage to better than 0.5%.