|
Current forecasts as forwarded by commercial aerospace industries foresee a steady growth of air traffic and replacement of ageing aircraft over the next twenty years. To remain competitive on the international airliner market these industries are under pressure to change continuously to more cost efficient development of new aircraft and derivatives. Key CFD-technology for improved aerodynamic design reducing development costs and inducing faster aircraft development is urgently needed by the European aerospace industry. This is expressed in detail in the December 12, 1996 paper "The aeronautical industry's technology needs", written by IMG3 within the framework of AECMA, the European Association of Aerospace Industries. In addition the European aerospace research and development sector is heavily divided compared to the US where development of common CFD technology is usance. To acquire new common CFD-technology for improved aircraft design it is of utmost importance that the basic research started in the FASTFLO project in 1996 is continued in FASTFLO II, the presently proposed project.
Starting point for the development is the common CFD system developed in the FASTFLO-I project (which started in April 1996). By extending the physical modelling from Euler equations (FASTFLO-I) to Navier-Stokes equations a CFD system with a viscous flow simulation capability will be acquired (FASTFLO-II). The objective of the proposed research is to develop, validate and exploit an automated CFD system based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations applicable to complex aircraft configurations. The CFD system will have to satisfy two basic requirements for industrial CFD:
- 1. The CFD-problem-turnaround time must be of the order of a day to a week
- 2. The aerodynamic entities must be predicted with a high accuracy on the
Navier-Stokes level.
The main technical impact of the deliverable CFD system will be in the aerodynamic design cycle. Reduced cost and faster development will be realised due to application of the FASTFLO CFD system. Application of the CFD system is expected for many European projects. Existing CFD methods used by industry in the aerodynamic design process are based on the multi-block approach. It is internationally recognised that the multi-block grid generation process is very time consuming despite very significant efforts to shorten the turnaround time. The CFD system will be based on the hybrid (prismatic/tetrahedral) unstructured grid approach. Highly innovative elements will be introduced (to be implemented during the project) to improve the accuracy. Another key innovative aspect of the FASTFLO-II project is the joint European development of a common CFD system for airframe computational fluid dynamics. Three countries (NL, DL, SE) have taken the lead in the common system development. European wide dissemination of the common CFD system, main deliverable of the FASTFLO-II project, is planned. Organisations in other European countries (BE, F, IT, FI, GR, PT) will be invited to join in the exploitation phase.
The current consortium for the FASTFLO-II project consists of 7 partners: two aircraft manufacturing companies SAAB and DASA, the research laboratories NLR, FFA and DLR, one university TU-Delft, and one small and medium sized enterprise IBK. The composition of the partnership is consistent with the objectives, comprises active industrial involvement and effective SMA involvement (IBK). The partners will be able to exploit the results effectively.
|
