Reduced Order Model for Standard Computer-aided Engineering Design Workflows

Abstract

Design of complex cyber-physical products and systems such as aircrafts, cars, underwater vehicles, robotic arms, etc., is a lengthy process in which designers across multiple teams rely on well established engineering workflows executing simulations of various fidelities. These workflows usually implement, at some point in the design process, high-fidelity physics-based simulations that involve solving ordinary and/or partial differential equations (PDEs) in the different disciplines considered (e.g., fluid dynamics, structures, heat transfer, dynamics and controls etc.). While significant research is being conducted in developing algorithms to solve these PDEs faster, there is currently a reliance on data-driven reduced order modeling (ROM) to augment or replace the traditional simulations; however, these ROMs are mainly employed during the asset operation phase rather than their design. Additionally, the need for these simulation acceleration techniques is enforced by the need for mission optimized designs, for example in the case of unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles. With optimization becoming more prevalent in engineering, geometric changes are often enforced in the design exploration processes. Thus, it is essential for the ROMs to handle geometric changes. When considering ROMs, projection-based techniques rely on having a grid of points (i.e., mesh) which are projected into a common lower-dimensional manifold. In the presence of geometric changes, mesh morphing techniques have recently solved this issue provided modification of the geometry and mesh generation steps is possible; however, in many practical situations designers only have access to a black-box workflow whose steps cannot be edited or the mesh morphing skills needed are not immediately available or are simply prohibitive. Thus, we present a design-focused ROM which can be coupled with existing black-box computer-aided engineering workflows. We demonstrate the ability to develop ROMs in practical situations where designers have only access to a black-box workflow. Our proposed method converts varying geometry results from black-box workflows into a common dimension mesh which enables known ROM techniques to be applied during the product design phase. We apply these methods to accelerate fluid mechanics simulations and strength analysis in the design of unmanned underwater vehicles. For these design cases, the proposed method reconstructs the relevant fields with more than two order of magnitude speed-ups with minimal loss in accuracy.