Modeling for Conceptual Design: An Aeroelastic Approach

Conceptual design traditionally is accomplished with the lowest fidelity tools available to the design engineer augmented with high fidelity aerodynamics. However decisions made during this relatively short period of time have a very large impact on the life-cycle cost and performance of an aircraft. Historically a configuration and associated outer mold line for a design is selected without considering all the relevant technologies, multi-disciplinary interactions or all the single disciplines that will have an impact on the vehicle. Most methods are focused primarily on the aerodynamics with very low fidelity empirical methods applied to the other disciplines. This paper focuses on a method of bringing multiphysics based analysis forward, into the conceptual design process. The paper will discuss improving the design process to keep more than a single configuration in consideration until they have been evaluated with higher fidelity multi-disciplinary tools. Finally the paper will introduce a new rapid model generation tool being developed within the Air Force Research Lab. The rapid model generator generates aeroelastic models for MSC Nastran, ASTROS and ZAERO. It supports drag prediction from AWAVE for supersonic wave drag and other tools to estimate viscous drag at zero lift conditions. Additionally aerodynamic models for rigid vortex lattice methods are generated to estimate drag polars for use in performance calculations.