An automated CFD analysis workflow in overall aircraft design applications

Abstract

An automated CFD-based analysis process for applications at the early aircraft development stages is presented. The robustness of the implemented process, which relies on a knowledge-based layer implemented into the automated pre-processing step of the geometrical components, allows taking advantage of high fidelity simulations, also for large explorations of the design space. The well-known aircraft configuration DLR-F6 is chosen to verify the automated analysis process. The CFD analysis process is integrated into the DLR multi-fidelity aircraft design environment, which relies on the DLR open source distributed framework RCE, and the DLR central data model CPACS. The overall aircraft design synthesis is performed for a conventional passenger transportation aircraft configuration, by making use of variable fidelity methods for the aerodynamic analysis. The results discuss the impact of employing CFD-based analysis into overall aircraft design applications.

Preliminary Analysis of the Stability and Controllability of a Box-Wing Aircraft Configuration

“…The study of the aeromechanical features of a commercial aircraft can be approached on different levels with the use of tools and methods of different fidelity [53][54][55][56]. Depending on the study to be carried out, and on the maturity of the design process, there are appropriate choices that allow for optimising the trade-off between the reliability of the numerical results and the computational cost/time [57][58][59][60][61]. In this context, Table 1 briefly summarises the characteristics of a set of different fidelity methods that can be used to characterise the aerodynamic derivatives of typical commercial aircraft.…”

Medium-Range Aircraft Conceptual Design from a Local Air Quality and Climate Change Viewpoint

“…First, in the Aerodynamic evaluations block, the Vortex Lattice Method (VLM) code named Athena Vortex Lattice (AVL) [29] is used to evaluate trim, stability, and induced drag, whereas the consolidated literature methods are used to evaluate the parasitic [30] and wave drag [31]. Furthermore, if higher fidelity datasets are available, it is possible to use these data to perform more detailed aerodynamic evaluations, e.g., outcomes from CFD-based tools for aerodynamics assessments [32,33] or CFD-built databases [34,35] can be integrated in the design workflow to replace VLM and textbook methods evaluations. The Propulsion system sizing stage performs the sizing of thermal engines and electric motors by using the matching chart shown in Figure 2, which is a diagram that correlates the required specific power (P/W) with the aircraft wing loading (W/S) [36,37].…”

A coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics and Wells-Riley model to predict COVID-19 infection probability for passengers on long-distance trains

“…Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a well-established modelling approach for simulating fluid flows within complex environments ( Patankar, 1980 ). Established applications of CFD include vehicle aerodynamics ( Gu et al, 2018 , Thabet and Thabit, 2018 ), fire simulation ( Galea, 1989 ), ventilation studies ( Wang et al, 2014 ), refrigeration ( Foroozesh et al, 2020 ) and turbine design ( Hoseinzade et al, 2021 , Yazdani and Lakzian, 2020 ). CFD has also been used to model the transmission of airborne infectious disease through the simulation of the transport of respiratory aerosols within ventilated spaces ( Peng et al, 2020 ).…”