AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Abstract

This talk will present a multidisciplinary sensitivity analysis approach that has been developed and applied to rotorcraft simulations involving tightly coupled high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and comprehensive analysis (CA). An unstructured-grid, highly-scalable CFD solver, FUN3D, and a nonlinear flexible multibody dynamics CA model, DYMORE, are coupled to predict the airloads and structural responses of helicopter rotor blades. A discretely consistent, adjoint-based sensitivity analysis in FUN3D provides sensitivities arising from unsteady turbulent flows on unstructured, dynamic, overset meshes, while a complex-variable approach is used to assess structural sensitivities with respect to aerodynamic loads. The multidisciplinary sensitivity analysis is conducted by integrating the sensitivity components from each discipline of the coupled system. The accuracy of the coupled system for high-fidelity rotorcraft analysis is verified; simulation results exhibit good agreement with established solutions. A constrained gradient-based design optimization for a HART-II rotorcraft configuration is demonstrated. The computational cost for individual components of the multidisciplinary sensitivity analysis is assessed.

Speaker

Dr. Li Wang

Senior Research Engineer from the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) and also a Research Associate in the Computational AeroSciences branch at the NASA Langley Research Center. Her current work focuses on the development of a practical, efficient, and high-fidelity tool for multidisciplinary sensitivity analysis involving coupled computational fluid dynamics and comprehensive analysis for rotorcraft aeromechanics. Li earned her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wyoming in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Dimitri Mavriplis. Her PhD research was centered on the development of techniques for adaptive discontinues Galerkin methods in fluid dynamics. Prior to joining NIA, Li held an Assistant Research Professor position from 2009 to 2015 at the SimCenter of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and a joint appointment with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she gained extensive experience in high-order computational fluid dynamics methods for turbulent flow simulations, error estimation, and mesh adaptation. Dr. Wang previously served as a member of the AIAA Applied Aerodynamics Technical Committee and Technical Co-chair of the 31st AIAA Applied Aerodynamics Conference.