NATO STO Research Task Group AVT-351 on Enhanced Computational Performance and Stability and Control Prediction for NATO Military Vehicles

Abstract

Numerical simulations are a principal tool across the lifecycle of NATO military air and sea vehicles. Over last two decades an extensive evaluation and validation of computational prediction capabilities of stability and control characteristics took place within the NATO/STO AVT community. However, high-fidelity numerical tools such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are expensive from both a time and cost perspective. The Research Task Group (RTG) AVT-351 focused on the development and assessment of Reduced-Order Modeling (ROM) techniques to overcome these limitations of CFD in terms of providing data in a fraction of time supporting military vehicle design and early decision making. Over a four-year period, the RTG developed and evaluated various different ROM approaches, collected data, and shared ideas among 12 participating nations. The RTG demonstrated the applicability of multiple ROM techniques for accurate prediction of performance characteristics with low computational cost in both air and sea domains. Use cases included a generic fighter aircraft, a high-aspect glider aircraft, a generic SSK class submarine, and a naval surface combatant. Additional work is required to understand the extent of cost reduction achievable with these approaches. Open questions remain on combining data sets with different fidelity levels or quantifying uncertainty in models.