Structured Overset Meshing Framework for Fixed-Wing Aircraft Configurations
Rick E. Graves, Scott E. Sherer, Renato Jelic · 50th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition · 2012
A process is developed to automate external aerodynamic investigations of xed-wing aircraft con gurations using structured overset meshing and analysis technology. Since it has been established by many researchers that mesh generation is often a bottleneck that may prevent the generation of timely results, e ort is devoted to identifying characteristic topologies that occur on xed-wing aircraft that readily lend themselves to e cient automation. A script-based mesh generation process is presented for xed-wing aircraft, and applied to a series of aero-optical use cases designed to predict total aerodynamic performance as a result of a design change, and model potentially relevant interactions between aircraft components. It is demonstrated that improvements in automation e ciency can be achieved with existing tools. However, certain topologies exist that are resistant to automation e orts, requiring sustained expert user intervention to achieve a suitable mesh using established best practices. The current maturity level of this capability for xedwing aircraft is a semi-automated process that is easily transitioned to a broader range of xed-wing aircraft analyses, where many mesh generation tasks may be completed without intervention by the user. Veri cation of domain connectivity using available tools remains an activity that requires manual intervention by an expert user.