A Script-Based CAD System for Aerodynamic Design

Mukundakrishnan, Bharath; Rajmohan, Nischint; Rajnarayan, Dev; Fugal, Spencer R.

doi:10.2514/6.2019-3069

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 10 publications

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“…While some automated analysis remains a challenge in certain disciplines, progress is being made on the automation of a number of domains used in the analysis of fusion reactors. In domains such as aerospace 2 , the automatic generation of simplified representative CAD geometries has given great benefit to the concept design process. Fusion reactor design processes involve analysis being carried out and fed back into the creation of the next CAD model; this process is usually a manual GUI based operation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Paramak: automated parametric geometry construction for fusion reactor designs.

et al. 2021

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During the conceptual design process of fusion reactors it is useful to rapidly prototype different design concepts and assess their suitability against a range of high level requirements. Rapid prototyping allows the 'fail early' mantra of other fields to be applied to engineering design. Furthermore, the rapid generation of low fidelity analysis allows fast exploration of design space, which enables better decisions to be made during concept selection and the detailed design phase. The Paramak is an open-source tool that aims to provide automated parameter driven 3D CAD models for fusion reactor components and magnetic fusion reactors. The geometry produced is compatible with several analysis workflows and this allows iterative automated model building and analysis to help steer the design concept optimisation process. The Paramak uses CadQuery 2 to create the 3D CAD model. The Paramak framework is used to create a few example reactor configurations including: a spherical reactor, a regular large radius tokamak and a compact submersion tank reactor. Input parameters for the various reactors that the Paramak can generate generally fall into three categories: continuous ranges such as blanket thickness, integer ranges such as number of toroidal field coils and categorical parameters such as type of divertor. The Paramak facilitates parameter studies where users can investigate the impact of input design parameters on the reactor performance. The use of modern software practices allows the geometry to be continuously tested in analysis workflows to ensure it is fit for purpose. The generation of output metrics from input parameters lends itself to the use of data science and machine learning approaches in order to steer the design. The Paramak provides rapid construction of analysis ready CAD in a manner that allows the designer to save time when exploring the design space for design studies and facilitate automated generative design.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%