Development of Deformed Computer-Aided Design Geometries for the Sixth Drag Prediction Workshop

Abstract

A method for modifying the shape of digital geometry representations used in computer-aided design applications according to experimental pointwise deflection data is described. In the pilot study presented here, the method is applied to the computer-aided design geometry of an aircraft wing that is deformed using measured deflections obtained from the associated wing model during a wind-tunnel test. The method provides various advantages in computational fluid dynamics and other applications. Numerical grids generated on the deformed geometry yield an improved correlation of computational fluid dynamics results to wind-tunnel data without the need for aeroelastic computations, which require coupling to a structural model. Additionally, the method is beneficial in aerodynamic optimization, where the optimized shape is usually given in the form of a computational fluid dynamics surface mesh or nodal deflections that, for further processing or manufacturing purposes, need to be transferred into a computer-aided design geometry description. The paper presents an application to NASA’s Common Research Model transport aircraft configuration, where deformation measurements from a test campaign in the European Transonic Wind Tunnel are processed to provide deformed computer-aided design geometries for the Sixth AIAA Computational Fluid Dynamics Drag Prediction Workshop.