Date of Award

Summer 1997

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Program/Concentration

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Director

Oktay Baysal

Committee Member

Robert E. Smith

Committee Member

Colin P. Britcher

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E535 C67

Abstract

First, a newly developed interactive surface generation tool is described for the conceptual design phase and aerodynamic shape optimization of aircraft. The new design tool is called Interactive Rapid Airplane Parametric Input Design (IRAPID) for fuselage and wing body configurations, and Blended Wing Body (BWB) generator for flying wing configurations. The development of the software is based on the RAPID methodology, which incorporates a partial differential equation approach to surface design. By incorporating physical airplane design parameters into the boundaty conditions of the partial differential equation, the solution surface of a wing configuration is generated. The construction of fuselage components is accomplished through algebraic equations. The results of the RAPID methodology provide the numerical representation of aerospace configurations as structured surface meshes which are suitable for a wide variety of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. Next, a grid sensitivity analysis is incorporated through automatic differentiation of the RAPID surface generation algorithm via an automatic differentiation tool, ADIFOR. The grid sensitivities of the RAPID model are calculated with respect to six airfoil design parameters and are validated against divided differences and analytical differentiation results to ensure accuracy. Both software components, IRAPID and BWB, are demonstrated to show new innovations in surface representation with automatic structured grid generation and grid sensitivity analysis. The new design tool is used in applications pertaining to conceptual aircraft design and aerodynamic shape optimization procedures.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/53h7-dx75

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