Publications

Conference Paper

Shaping Sustainable Aviation with CFD-Based Design Optimization

authors

J. R. R. A. Martins, M. A. S. Abdul-Kaiyoom, E. J. Adler, A. C. Gray, H. Hajdik, E. Jonsson, A. H. R. Lamkin, B. Pacini, and A. Yildirim

journal

34th Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 2024

PDF 
@inproceedings{Martins2024,
  address = {Florence, Italy},
  author = {Martins, Joaquim R. R. A. and Abdul-Kaiyoom, M. A. Saja and Adler, Eytan J. and Gray, Alasdair C. and Hajdik, Hannah and Jonsson, Eirikur and Lamkin, Andrew H. R. and Pacini, Bernardo and Yildirim, Anil},
  booktitle = {34th Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences},
  keywords = {ANK, MPhys},
  month = sep,
  title = {Shaping Sustainable Aviation with {CFD}-Based Design Optimization},
  year = {2024}
}
Google Scholar

Component intersections are a persistent challenge in aerodynamic design with the drag of a full configuration that is typically larger than that of its individual components. To remedy this, designers create fairings and fillets between the component surfaces to reduce this interference drag. These additions require iterative design and costly analyses to perfect, but aerodynamic shape optimization can find a better design quicker than traditional processes. For designs involving intersecting components, special handling of deformations is needed to preserve mesh quality within aerodynamic shape optimization. In this work, we present a method that uses inverse distance warping to deform a fillet between two components for the minimum drag design that retains mesh quality. We show that this method is tractable within an aerodynamic shape optimization process and results in lower drag designs than those optimized without changing the intersection region. This method enables better aircraft designs through more detailed aerodynamic shape optimization.