An automated CFD analysis workflow in overall aircraft design applications

Abstract

An automated CFD based analysis process for early aircraft development stages is presented. The robustness of the implemented process, which relies on the knowledge based layer implemented into the pre-processing 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 applied to verify the automated process. The CFD analysis chain is integrated into the DLR multi-fidelity aircraft design synthesis process, by using the DLR open source distributed framework RCE, and the DLR central data model CPACS. An 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 demonstrate the impact of using CFD based analysis into overall aircraft design applications