SBIR-STTR Award

A new multidisciplinary software environment ('MUSE') will be developed for the simulation of flight vehicles, drawing on the results of recent research on very fast algorithms, performed at Stanford University under Professor Antony Jameson's guidance. This new technology will be merged with Intelligent Aerodynamics' finite element methology implemented in the product FASTPLANE. This code, which uses multigrid acceleration techniques and is fully parallelized, can already perform^Msteady-state simulations of complete aircraft in less than 5 minutes on a 16 processor Beowulf cluster. The synergy resulting from the technology transfer will lead to a new level of capability for the simulation of both steady and unsteady flows, thus providing the platform needed to couple additional disciplines into an advanced multidisciplinary tool for aero-structural and thermal analysis. It can also provide the platform for a new generation of design-optimization software using the adjoint methodology developed by Antony Jameson and his collaborators during the last decade. Moreover, with further advances in the performance of computer hardware that can be anticipated, real time simulation of flight vehicles should in the future be feasible with this new software. This would provide a powerful new tool to support flight-testing.

Industry is driven by the cost of man-power and time to market, and is still awaiting a versatile and reliable multi-disciplinary analysis code. The proposed JFLO software suite addresses many aspects that are still not totally resolved in current state-of- the-art CFD. It will enable optimal designs as well as the multi-disciplinary application of CFD for digital flight. The key elements of JFLO are : ease of use; broad analysis capability for 3D steady and unsteady applications for the entire range of speeds for low Mach to supersonic, high-resolution mesh-blind solution algorithms and CAD-blind surface reconstruction, mesh-and user-independent results via CAD-respecting mesh adaptation, fast solutions via advanced convergence acceleration techniques, and above all reliability and high accuracy. It weaves together technologies that have been recognized in their individual right: optimal control design, coupled CFD and CSD and automatic mesh optimization. Here they are brought together in a single package for the first time.