New tools for bringing preliminary aerodynamics analysis into conceptual design environments

Abstract

Demands upon the conceptual designer are currently increasing, as design proposals seek to address ever more questions at once, and companies seek to develop greater numbers of proposals in the hopes of their acceptance. Customers like the DoD now require a thorough analysis of alternatives for all their acquisition decisions. The demands upon conceptual designers are likely to increase further with netwo rk-centric, system-of-systems and other highly complex design regimes. This paper discusse s two new software tools developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology that can help c onceptual designers meet these new challenges: the “Concept Requirements Visualization and Exploration Tool” (CoRVET) and “Modified UDP and SHABP for Trading Aerodynamics on Notional Geometries” (MUSTANG). MUSTANG was developed to integrate the Aerodynamic Preliminary Analysis System (APAS), an industry standard preliminary design code, into a modern automated design environment. In order to do this, the sub-/supersonic UDP code was separated from APAS and integrated with an updated version of the hypersonic SHABP code via Phoenix Integration’s ModelCenter environment. Helper scripts were developed to allow UDP to be executed with plain-text inputs and outputs. CoRVET enables its users to rapidly generate geometry models to use in these ae rodynamics codes, and also provides a platform for configuration and sizing. The tool wa s developed in Microsoft Excel in order to allow for tight integration with the spreadsheet an alyses common to conceptual design. CoRVET can also use cell formulas to create high-level design variables for optimization or design of experiment parameters. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros are used to automatically generate SHABP and UDP geometry, including mirroring, the generation of interference shells and aero-surface paneling. The macros also enable a true “sketch” capability, where the user can easily transform con ceptual sketches drawn with a mouse into baseline aerodynamic data. CoRVET and MUSTANG together bring physics-based aerodynamic analysis to the conceptual design process, replacing previously used lowerfidelity methods.