Multi-fidelity computational fluid dynamics for aircraft stability and control aerodynamics

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The past decade has seen a tremendous rise in the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for aircraft design and analysis. This stems from the constant progression of numerical analysis techniques developed in Universities in the 1980's and 1990's that has finally matured into accurate, efficient and robust software now used within the aerospace industries. While CFD techniques are routinely used to solve flows over aircraft in the cruise, take-off and landing configurations, there remains to develop and validate methods that will increase the range of applicability of CFD techniques. In particular, the project will focus on unsteady flows over complex configurations that arise when aircraft control surfaces are used during flight manoeuvres. The approach will be twofold, one focusing on development of low-fidelity models suitable for used within preliminary design studies, the other focusing on high-fidelity models used during the detail design phase of aircraft developments. Aircraft topologies with ailerons, spoilers or horizontal stabilizers will be analysed with high-lift systems deployed and retracted. Flow conditions will include asymmetrical as well as unsteady flight conditions in subsonic and transonic regimes. Viscous effects will be incorporated in the modelling. The project will also examine the feasibility of implementing these methods for use into aero-servo-elasticity calculations for the design of highly flexible wing aircraft. The project will benefit from a collaboration with international experts within a European Framework 7 program named ADVICE (Aero-structural Design, Validation and Control of very flexible aircraft), also focused on the use of computational methods in low and high fidelity realms. This provides a unique opportunity to study novel aircraft design concepts, increase the state-of-the-art in computational techniques for our industries competitiveness, and to expose our students to multi-national R&D collaborative environments.