VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Choi, Seongim Sarah"

Browsing by Author "Choi, Seongim Sarah"

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An Approach to Incorporate Additive Manufacturing and Rapid Prototype Testing for Aircraft Conceptual Design to Improve MDO Effectiveness
Friedman, Alex Matthew (Virginia Tech, 2015-06-19)
The primary objectives of this work are two-fold. First, additive manufacturing (AM) and rapid prototype (RP) testing are evaluated for use in production of a wind tunnel (WT) models. Second, an approach was developed to incorporate stability and control (SandC) WT data into aircraft conceptual design multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). Both objectives are evaluated in terms of data quality, time, and cost. FDM(TM) and PolyJet AM processes were used for model production at low cost and time. Several models from a representative tailless configuration, ICE 101, were printed and evaluated for strength, cost and time of production. Furthermore, a NACA 0012 model with 20% chord flap was manufactured. Both models were tested in the Virginia Tech (VT) Open-Jet WT for force and moment acquisition. A 1/15th scale ICE 101 model was prepared for manufacturing, but limits of FDM(TM) technology were identified for production. An approach using WT data was adapted from traditional surrogate-based optimization (SBO), which uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for data generation. Split-plot experimental designs were developed for analysis of the WT SBO strategy using historical data and for WT testing of the NACA 0012. Limitations of the VT Open-Jet WT resulted in a process that was not fully effective for a MDO environment. However, resolution of ICE 101 AM challenges and higher quality data from a closed-section WT should result in a fully effective approach to incorporate AM and RP testing in an aircraft conceptual design MDO.
CMOS Receiver Design for Optical Communications over the Data-Rate of 20 Gb/s
Chong, Joseph (Virginia Tech, 2018-06-21)
Circuits to extend operation data-rate of a optical receiver is investigated in the dissertation. A new input-stage topology for a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) is designed to achieve 50% higher data-rate is presented, and a new architecture for clock recovery is proposed for 50% higher clock rate. The TIA is based on a gm-boosted common-gate amplifier. The input-resistance is reduced by modifying a transistor at input stage to be diode-connected, and therefore lowers R-C time constant at the input and yielding higher input pole frequency. It also allows removal of input inductor, which reduces design complexity. The proposed circuit was designed and fabricated in 32 nm CMOS SOI technology. Compared to TIAs which mostly operates at 50 GHz bandwidth or lower, the presented TIA stage achieves bandwidth of 74 GHz and gain of 37 dBohms while dissipating 16.5 mW under 1.5V supply voltage. For the clock recovery circuit, a phase-locked loop is designed consisting of a frequency doubling mechanism, a mixer-based phase detector and a 40 GHz voltage-controlled oscillator. The proposed frequency doubling mechanism is an all-analog architecture instead of the conventional digital XOR gate approach. This approach realizes clock-rate of 40 GHz, which is at least 50% higher than other circuits with mixer-based phase detector. Implemented with 0.13-μm CMOS technology, the clock recovery circuit presents peak-to-peak clock jitter of 2.38 ps while consuming 112 mW from a 1.8 V supply.
Comparison of Heat Exchanger Designs for Aircraft Thermal Management Systems
Reed, William Cody (Virginia Tech, 2015-09-02)
Thermal management has become a major concern in the design of current and future more and all electric aircraft (M/AEA). With ever increasing numbers of on-board heat sources, higher heat loads, limited and even decreasing numbers of heat sinks, integration of advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and directed energy weapons, requirements for survivability, the use of composite materials, etc., existing thermal management systems and their components have been pushed to the limit. To address this issue, more efficient methods of thermal management must be implemented to ensure that these new M/AEA aircraft do not overheat and prematurely abort their missions. Crucial to this effort is the need to consider advanced heat exchanger concepts, comparing their designs and performance with those of the conventional compact exchangers currently used on-board aircraft thermal management systems. As a step in this direction, the work presented in this thesis identifies two promising advanced heat exchanger concepts, namely, microchannel and phase change heat exchangers. Detailed conceptual design and performance models for these as well as for a conventional plate-fin compact heat exchanger are developed and their design and performance optimized relative to the criterion of minimum dry weight. Results for these optimizations are presented, comparisons made, conclusions drawn, and recommendations made for future research. These results and comparisons show potential performance benefits for aircraft thermal management incorporating microchannel and phase change heat exchangers.
Continuum Sensitivity Analysis using Boundary Velocity Formulation for Shape Derivatives
Kulkarni, Mandar D. (Virginia Tech, 2016-09-28)
The method of Continuum Sensitivity Analysis (CSA) with Spatial Gradient Reconstruction (SGR) is presented for calculating the sensitivity of fluid, structural, and coupled fluid-structure (aeroelastic) response with respect to shape design parameters. One of the novelties of this work is the derivation of local CSA with SGR for obtaining flow derivatives using finite volume formulation and its nonintrusive implementation (i.e. without accessing the analysis source code). Examples of a NACA0012 airfoil and a lid-driven cavity highlight the effect of the accuracy of the sensitivity boundary conditions on the flow derivatives. It is shown that the spatial gradients of flow velocities, calculated using SGR, contribute significantly to the sensitivity transpiration boundary condition and affect the accuracy of flow derivatives. The effect of using an inconsistent flow solution and Jacobian matrix during the nonintrusive sensitivity analysis is also studied. Another novel contribution is derivation of a hybrid adjoint formulation of CSA, which enables efficient calculation of design derivatives of a few performance functions with respect to many design variables. This method is demonstrated with applications to 1-D, 2-D and 3-D structural problems. The hybrid adjoint CSA method computes the same values for shape derivatives as direct CSA. Therefore accuracy and convergence properties are the same as for the direct local CSA. Finally, we demonstrate implementation of CSA for computing aeroelastic response shape derivatives. We derive the sensitivity equations for the structural and fluid systems, identify the sources of the coupling between the structural and fluid derivatives, and implement CSA nonintrusively to obtain the aeroelastic response derivatives. Particularly for the example of a flexible airfoil, the interface that separates the fluid and structural domains is chosen to be flexible. This leads to coupling terms in the sensitivity analysis which are highlighted. The integration of the geometric sensitivity with the aeroelastic response for obtaining shape derivatives using CSA is demonstrated.
Coupled Adjoint-based Sensitivity Analysis using a FSI Method in Time Spectral Form
Kim, Hyunsoon (Virginia Tech, 2019-09-26)
A time spectral and coupled adjoint based sensitivity analysis of rotor blade is carried out in this study. The time spectral method is an efficient technique to solve unsteady periodic problems by transforming unsteady equation of motion to a steady state one. Due to the availability of the governing equations in the steady form, the steady form of the adjoint equations can be applied for the sensitivity analysis of the coupled fluid-structure system. An expensive computational time and memory requirement for the unsteady adjoint sensitivity analysis is thus avoided. A coupled analysis of fluid, structural, and flight dynamics is carried out through a CFD/CSD/CA coupling procedure that combines FSI analysis with enforced trim condition. Coupled sensitivity analysis results and their validations are presented and compared with aerodynamics only sensitivity analysis results. The fluid-structure coupled adjoint based sensitivity analysis will be applied to the shape optimization of a rotor blade in the future work. Minimization of required power is the objective of the optimization problem with constraints on thrust and drag of the rotor. The bump functions are considered as the design variables. Rotor blade shape changes are obtained by using the bump function on the surface of the airfoil sections along the span.
Design Optimization of a Regional Transport Aircraft with Hybrid Electric Distributed Propulsion Systems
Rajkumar, Vishnu Ganesh (Virginia Tech, 2018-08-03)
In recent years, there has been a growing shift in the world towards sustainability. For civil aviation, this is reflected in the goals of several organizations including NASA and ACARE as significantly increased fuel efficiency along with reduced harmful emissions in the atmosphere. Achieving the goals necessitates the advent of novel and radical aircraft technologies, NASA's X-57, is one such concept using distributed electric propulsion (DEP) technology. Although practical implementation of DEP is achievable due to the scale invariance of highly efficient electric motors, the current battery technology restricts its adoption for commercial transport aircraft. A Hybrid Electric Distributed Propulsion (HEDiP) system offers a promising alternative to the all-electric system. It leverages the benefits of DEP when coupled with a hybrid electric system. One of the areas needing improvement in HEDiP aircraft design is the fast and accurate estimation of wing aerodynamic characteristics in the presence of multiple propellers. A VLM based estimation technique was developed to address this requirement. This research is primarily motivated by the need to have mature conceptual design methods for HEDiP aircraft. Therefore, the overall research objective is to develop an effective conceptual design capability based on a proven multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) framework, and to demonstrate the resulting capability by applying it to the conceptual design of a regional transport aircraft (RTA) with HEDiP systems.
Efficient Global Optimization of Multidisciplinary System using Variable Fidelity Analysis and Dynamic Sampling Method
Park, Jangho (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-22)
Work in this dissertation is motivated by reducing the design cost at the early design stage while maintaining high design accuracy throughout all design stages. It presents four key design methods to improve the performance of Efficient Global Optimization for multidisciplinary problems. First, a fidelity-calibration method is developed and applied to lower-fidelity samples. Function values analyzed by lower fidelity analysis methods are updated to have equivalent accuracy to that of the highest fidelity samples, and these calibrated data sets are used to construct a variable-fidelity Kriging model. For the design of experiment (DOE), a dynamic sampling method is developed and includes filtering and infilling data based on mathematical criteria on the model accuracy. In the sample infilling process, multi-objective optimization for exploitation and exploration of design space is carried out. To indicate the fidelity of function analysis for additional samples in the variable-fidelity Kriging model, a dynamic fidelity indicator with the overlapping coefficient is proposed. For the multidisciplinary design problems, where multiple physics are tightly coupled with different coupling strengths, multi-response Kriging model is introduced and utilizes the method of iterative Maximum Likelihood Estimation (iMLE). Through the iMLE process, a large number of hyper-parameters in multi-response Kriging can be calculated with great accuracy and improved numerical stability. The optimization methods developed in the study are validated with analytic functions and showed considerable performance improvement. Consequentially, three practical design optimization problems of NACA0012 airfoil, Multi-element NLR 7301 airfoil, and all-moving-wingtip control surface of tailless aircraft are performed, respectively. The results are compared with those of existing methods, and it is concluded that these methods guarantee the equivalent design accuracy at computational cost reduced significantly.
Helicopter Rotor Flow Analysis Using Mapped Chebyshev Pseudospectral Method and Overset Mesh Topology
Im, Dong Kyun; Choi, Seongim Sarah (Hindawi, 2018-05-15)
Unsteady helicopter rotor flows are solved by a Chebyshev pseudospectral method with overset mesh topology which employs Chebyshev polynomials for solution approximation and a Chebyshev collocation operator to represent the time derivative term of the unsteady flow governing equations. Spatial derivative terms of the flux Jacobians are discretized implicitly while the Chebyshev spectral derivative term is treated in explicit form. Unlike the Fourier spectral method, collocation points of standard Chebyshev polynomials are not evenly distributed and heavily clustered near the extremities of the time interval, which makes the spectral derivative matrix ill-conditioned and deteriorates the stability and convergence of the flow solution. A conformal mapping of an arcsin function is applied to redistribute those points more evenly and thus to improve the numerical stability of the linear system. A parameter study on the condition number of the spectral derivative matrix with respect to the control parameters of the mapping function is also carried out. For the validation of the proposed method, both periodic and nonperiodic unsteady flow problems were solved with two-dimensional problems: an oscillating airfoil with a fixed frequency and a plunging airfoil with constant plunging speed without considering gravitational force. Computation results of the Chebyshev pseudospectral method showed excellent agreements with those of the time-marching computation. Subsequently, helicopter rotor flows in hovering and nonlifting forward flight are solved. Moving boundaries of the rotating rotor blades are efficiently managed by the overset mesh topology. As a set of subgrids are constructed only one time at the beginning of the solution procedure corresponding to the mapped Chebyshev collocation points, computation time for mesh interpolation of hole-cutting between background and near-body grids becomes drastically reduced when compared to the time-marching computation method where subgrid movement and the hole-cutting need to be carried out at each physical time step. The number of the collocation points was varied to investigate the sensitivity of the solution accuracy, computation time, and memory. Computation results are compared with those from the time-marching computation, the Fourier spectral method, and wind-tunnel experimental data. Solution accuracy and computational efficiency are concluded to be great with the Chebyshev pseudospectral method. Further applications to unsteady nonperiodic problems will be left for future work.
Investigation of the Impact of Turboprop Propulsion on Fuel Efficiency and Economic Feasibility
Antcliff, Kevin Richard (Virginia Tech, 2014-10-02)
This study explored a 130-passenger advanced turboprop commercial airliner with the purposes of economic feasibility and energy efficiency. A baseline vehicle and a derivative vehicle were researched and analyzed in detail. Based on the findings of this analysis, an advanced future airliner was designed. For the advanced airliner, advanced technologies were suggested and projections of these technology benefits were implemented. Detailed performance analysis was conducted for all three aircraft. The energy efficiency of each vehicle was compared to current and future N+3 aircraft. Lastly, cost analysis was performed to observe the impact of these energy savings. The three existing and future concepts evaluated were: 1) Bombardier 80- passenger Q400 baseline, 2) An expanded 130-passenger Bombardier Q400 termed the Q400XL, and 3) an N+3 advanced 130-passenger turboprop airliner termed the N+3 Airliner. The N+3 Airliner was compared to the SUGAR High, a Boeing/NASA N+3 aircraft, in both fuel efficiency and economic feasibility. The N+3 Airliner was 22 percent more energy efficient. At current oil prices, the N+3 Airliner had nearly identical operating cost. However, at two times current oil prices, the N+3 Airliner has a slight advantage economically. Therefore, as long as the price of oil is above 2011 oil prices, $3.03 per barrel, the N+3 Airliner will be an economically viable option.
Multi-Fidelity Structural Modeling For Set Based Design of Advanced Marine Vehicles
Raj, Oliver Neal (Virginia Tech, 2018-05-22)
This thesis demonstrates that a parametrically-modifiable Advanced Marine Vehicle Structural (AMVS) module (that can be integrated into a larger framework of marine vehicle analysis modules) enables stakeholders, as a group, to complete structurally feasible ship designs using the Set-Based Design (SBD) method. The SBD method allows stakeholders to identify and explore multiple solutions to stakeholder requirements and only eliminating the infeasible poorer solutions after all solutions are completely explored. SBD offers the and advantage over traditional design methods such as Waterfall and Spiral because traditional methods do not adequately explore the design space to determine if they are eliminating more optimal solutions in terms of cost, risk and performance. The fundamental focus for this thesis was on the development of a parametrically modifiable AMVS module using a low-fidelity structural analysis method implemented using a numerical 2D Finite Element Analysis (FEA) applied to the HY2-SWATH. To verify the AMVS module accuracy, a high-fidelity structural analysis was implemented in MAESTRO to analyze the reference marine vehicle model and provide a comparison baseline. To explore the design space, the AMVS module is written to be parametrically modified through input variables, effectively generating a new vessel structure when an input is changed. AMVS module is used to analyze an advanced marine vessel in its two operating modes: displacement and foil-borne. AMVS demonstrates the capability to explore the design space and evaluate the structural feasibility of the advance marine vehicle designs through consideration of the material, stiffener/girder dimensions, stiffener/girder arrangement, and machinery/equipment weights onboard.
Network-Based Naval Ship Distributed System Design using Architecture Flow Optimization
Parsons, Mark A. (Virginia Tech, 2019)
This thesis describes the application of a distributed system architecture framework and Architecture Flow Optimization (AFO) to naval ship Concept & Requirements Exploration (C&RE). It describes refinements to both C&RE and AFO, and naval surface combatant concept design case studies. The architectural framework decomposes naval ship distributed systems into the physical, logical, and operational architectures representing the spatial, functional, and temporal relationships of distributed systems respectively. This decomposition greatly simplifies the Mission, Power, and Energy System (MPES) design process for use in C&RE. AFO is a network-based linear programming optimization method used to design and analyze MPES at a sufficient level of detail to understand system energy flow, define MPES architecture and sizing, reduce system vulnerability and improve system reliability. AFO incorporates system topologies, energy coefficient component models, preliminary arrangements, and (nominal and damaged) steady state scenarios to minimize the energy flow cost required to satisfy all operational scenario demands and constraints. This thesis provides an overview of design tools developed to implement this process and methods, including objective attribute metrics for cost, effectiveness and risk, ship synthesis model, hullform exploration and MPES explorations using design of experiments (DOEs) and response surface models.
Numerical Analysis of Flow and Heat Transfer through a Lean Premixed Swirl Stabilized Combustor Nozzle
Kedukodi, Sandeep (Virginia Tech, 2017-04-11)
While the gas turbine research community is continuously pursuing development of higher cyclic efficiency designs by increasing the combustor firing temperatures and thermally resistant turbine vane / blade materials, a simultaneous effort to reduce the emission levels of high temperature driven thermal NOX also needs to be addressed. Lean premixed combustion has been found as one of the solutions to these objectives. However, since less amount of air is available for backside cooling of liner walls, it becomes very important to characterize the convective heat transfer that occurs on the inside wall of the combustor liners. These studies were explored using laboratory scale experiments as well as numerical approaches for several inlet flow conditions under both non-reacting and reacting flows. These studies may be expected to provide valuable insights for the industrial design communities towards identifying thermal hot spot locations as well as in quantifying the heat transfer magnitude, thus aiding in effective designs of the liner walls. Lean premixed gas turbine combustor flows involve strongly coupled interactions between several aspects of physics such as the degree of swirl imparted by the inlet fuel nozzle, premixing of the fuel and incoming air, lean premixed combustion within the combustor domain, the interaction of swirling flow with combustion driven heat release resulting in flow dilation, the resulting pressure fluctuations leading to thermo-acoustic instabilities there by creating a feedback loop with incoming reactants resulting in flow instabilities leading to flame lift off, flame extinction etc. Hence understanding combustion driven swirling flow in combustors continues to be a topic of intense research. In the present study, numerical predictions of swirl driven combustor flows were analyzed for a specific swirl number of an industrial fuel nozzle (swirler) using a commercial computational fluid dynamics tool and compared against in-house experimental data. The latter data was obtained from a newly developed test rig at Applied Propulsion and Power Laboratory (APPL) at Virginia Tech. The simulations were performed and investigated for several flow Reynolds numbers under non-reacting condition using various two equation turbulence models as well as a scale resolving model. The work was also extended to reacting flow modeling (using a partially premixed model) for a specific Reynolds number. These efforts were carried out in order investigate the flow behavior and also characterize convective heat transfer along the combustor wall (liner). Additionally, several parametric studies were performed towards investigating the effect of combustor geometry on swirling flow and liner hear transfer; and also to investigate the effect of inlet swirl on the jet impingement location along the liner wall under both non-reacting as well as reacting conditions. The numerical results show detailed comparison against experiments for swirling flow profiles within the combustor under reacting conditions indicating a good reliability of steady state modeling approaches for reacting conditions; however, the limitations of steady state RANS turbulence models were observed for non-reacting swirling flow conditions, where the flow profiles deviate from experimental observations in the central recirculation region. Also, the numerical comparison of liner wall heat transfer characteristics against experiments showed a sensitivity to Reynolds numbers. These studies offer to provide preliminary insights of RANS predictions based on commercial CFD tools in predicting swirling, non-reacting and reacting flow and heat transfer. They can be extended to reacting flow heat transfer studies in future and also may be upgraded to unsteady LES predictions to complement future experimental observations conducted at the in-house test facility.
Numerical Methods for Fluid-Solid Coupled Simulations: Robin Interface Conditions and Shock-Dominated Applications
Cao, Shunxiang (Virginia Tech, 2019-09-09)
This dissertation investigates the development of numerical algorithms for coupling computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational solid dynamics (CSD) solvers, and the use of these solvers for simulating fluid-solid interaction (FSI) problems involving large deformation, shock waves, and multiphase flow. The dissertation consists of two parts. The first part investigates the use of Robin interface conditions to resolve the well-known numerical added-mass instability, which affects partitioned coupling procedures for solving problems with incompressible flow and strong added-mass effect. First, a one-parameter Robin interface condition is developed by linearly combining the conventional Dirichlet and Neumann interface conditions. Next, a numerical algorithm is developed to implement the Robin interface condition in an embedded boundary method for coupling a parallel, projection-based incompressible viscous flow solver with a nonlinear finite element solid solver. Both an analytical study and a numerical study reveal that the new algorithm can clearly outperform conventional Dirichlet-Neumann procedures in terms of both stability and accuracy, when the parameter value is carefully selected. Moreover, the studies also indicate that the optimal parameter value depends on the materials and geometry of the problem. Therefore, to efficiently solve FSI problems involving non-uniform structures, a generalized Robin interface condition is presented, in which the constant parameter is replaced by a spatially varying function that depends on the local material and geometric properties of the structure. Numerical experiments using two benchmark problems show that the spatially varying Robin interface condition can clearly improve numerical accuracy compared to the constant- parameter version with the same computational cost. The second part of this dissertation focuses on simulating complex FSI problems featuring shock waves, multiphase flow (e.g., bubbles), and shock-induced material damage and fracture. A recently developed three-dimensional computational framework is employed, which couples a multiphase, compressible CFD solver and a nonlinear finite element CSD solver using an embedded boundary method and a partitioned procedure. In particular, the CFD solver applies a level-set method to capture the evolution of the bubble surface, and the CSD solver utilizes a continuum damage mechanics model and an element erosion method to simulate the dynamic fracture of the material. Two computational studies are presented. The first one investigates the dynamic response and failure of a brittle material exposed to a prescribed shock wave. The predictive capability of the computational framework is first demonstrated by simulating a series of laboratory experiments in the context of shock wave lithotripsy. Then, a parametric study is conducted to elucidate the significant effects of the shock wave's profile on material damage. In the second study, the computational framework is applied to simulate shock-induced bubble collapse near various solid and soft materials. The reciprocal effect of the material's properties (e.g., acoustic impedance, Young's modulus) on bubble dynamics is discussed in detail.
Optimum Design of Compact, Quiet, and Efficient Ventilation Fans
Hurtado, Mark Pastor (Virginia Tech, 2020-01-20)
Axial ventilation fans are used to improve the air quality, remove contaminants, and to control the temperature and humidity in occupied areas. Ventilation fans are one of the most harmful sources of noise due to their close proximity to occupied areas and widespread use. The prolonged exposure to hazardous noise levels can lead to noise-induced hearing loss. Consequently, there is a critical need to reduce noise levels from ventilation fans. Since fan noise scales with the 4-6th power of the fan tip speed, minimizing the fan tip speed and optimizing the duct geometry are effective methods to reduce fan noise. However, there is a tradeoff between reducing fan speed, noise and aerodynamic efficiency. To this end, a new innovative comprehensive optimum design methodology considering both aerodynamic efficiency and noise was formulated and implemented using a multi-objective genetic algorithm. The methodology incorporates a control vortex design approach that results in a spanwise chord and twist distribution of the blades that maximize the volumetric flow rate contribution of the outer radii, i.e. the axial flow velocity increases from the fan hub to the tip. The resulting blade geometry generates a given volumetric flow rate at the minimum fan tip speed. The fan design is complemented by the design of the optimum inlet duct geometry to maximize volumetric flow rate and minimize BL thickness for low noise generation. Good agreement with experimental results validates the design process. The present study also incorporates multi-element airfoils to further increase the aerodynamic characteristics of the fan blades and enable lower fan speeds and noise. Good agreement between experiments and predictions indicate that traditional blade element momentum methods can be implemented in conjunction with multi-element airfoil aerodynamic characteristics with good accuracy. A direct comparison of fans designed with single and multi-element airfoils has shown that fans designed with multi-element airfoils aerodynamically outperform single element fans.
Prediction of Dynamic Stability Using Mapped Chebyshev Pseudospectral Method
Choi, Jae-Young; Im, Dong Kyun; Park, Jangho; Choi, Seongim Sarah (Hindawi, 2018-08-01)
A mapped Chebyshev pseudospectral method is extended to solve three-dimensional unsteady flow problems. As the classical Chebyshev spectral approach can lead to numerical instabilities due to ill conditioning of the spectral matrix, the Chebyshev points are evenly redistributed over the domain by an inverse sine mapping function. The mapped Chebyshev pseudospectral method can be used as an alternative time-spectral approach that uses a Chebyshev collocation operator to approximate the time derivative terms in the unsteady flow governing equations, and the method can make general applications to both nonperiodic and periodic problems. In this study, the mapped Chebyshev pseudospectral method is employed to solve three-dimensional periodic problem to verify the spectral accuracy and computational efficiency with those of the Fourier pseudospectral method and the time-accurate method. The results show a good agreement with both of the Fourier pseudospectral method and the time-accurate method. The flow solutions also demonstrate a good agreement with the experimental data. Similar to the Fourier pseudospectral method, the mapped Chebyshev pseudospectral method approximates the unsteady flow solutions with a precise accuracy at a considerably effective computational cost compared to the conventional time-accurate method.
Refinement of Surface Combatant Ship Synthesis Model for Network-Based System Design
Stinson, Nicholas Taylor (Virginia Tech, 2019-06-17)
This thesis describes an adaptable component level machinery system weight and size estimation tool used in the context of a ship distributed system architecture framework and ship synthesis model for naval ship concept design. The system architecture framework decomposes the system of systems into three intersecting architectures: physical, logical, and operational to describe the spatial and functional relationships of the system together with their temporal behavior characteristics. Following an Architecture Flow Optimization (AFO), or energy flow analysis based on this framework, vital components are sized based on their energy flow requirements for application in the ship synthesis model (SSM). Previously, components were sized manually or parametrically. This was not workable for assessing many designs in concept exploration and outdated parametric models based on historical data were not sufficiently applicable to new ship designs. The new methodology presented in this thesis uses the energy flow analysis, baseline component data, and physical limitations to individually calculate sizes and weights for each vital component in a ship power and energy system. The methodology allows for new technologies to be quickly and accurately implemented to assess their overall impact on the design. The optimized flow analysis combined with the component level data creates a higher fidelity design that can be analyzed to assess the impact of various systems and operational cases on the overall design. This thesis describes the SSM, discusses the AFO's contribution, and provides background on the component sizing methodology including the underlying theory, baseline data, energy conversion, and physical assumptions.
Robust and Data-Efficient Metamodel-Based Approaches for Online Analysis of Time-Dependent Systems
Xie, Guangrui (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-04)
Metamodeling is regarded as a powerful analysis tool to learn the input-output relationship of a system based on a limited amount of data collected when experiments with real systems are costly or impractical. As a popular metamodeling method, Gaussian process regression (GPR), has been successfully applied to analyses of various engineering systems. However, GPR-based metamodeling for time-dependent systems (TDSs) is especially challenging due to three reasons. First, TDSs require an appropriate account for temporal effects, however, standard GPR cannot address temporal effects easily and satisfactorily. Second, TDSs typically require analytics tools with a sufficiently high computational efficiency to support online decision making, but standard GPR may not be adequate for real-time implementation. Lastly, reliable uncertainty quantification is a key to success for operational planning of TDSs in real world, however, research on how to construct adequate error bounds for GPR-based metamodeling is sparse. Inspired by the challenges encountered in GPR-based analyses of two representative stochastic TDSs, i.e., load forecasting in a power system and trajectory prediction for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), this dissertation aims to develop novel modeling, sampling, and statistical analysis techniques for enhancing the computational and statistical efficiencies of GPR-based metamodeling to meet the requirements of practical implementations. Furthermore, an in-depth investigation on building uniform error bounds for stochastic kriging is conducted, which sets up a foundation for developing robust GPR-based metamodeling techniques for analyses of TDSs under the impact of strong heteroscedasticity.
Small UAV Trajcetory Prediction and Avoidance using Monocular Computer Vision
Kang, Changkoo (Virginia Tech, 2017-04-28)
Small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) must be able to detect and avoid conflicting traffic, an especially challenging task when the threat is another small UAS. Collision avoidance requires trajectory prediction and the performance of a collision avoidance system can be improved by extending the prediction horizon. In this thesis, an algorithm for predicting the trajectory of a small, fixed-wing UAS using an estimate of its orientation and for maneuvering around the threat, if necessary, is developed. A computer vision algorithm locates specific feature points of a threat aircraft in an image and the POSIT algorithm uses these feature points to estimate the pose (position and attitude) of the threat. A sequence of pose estimates is then used to predict the trajectory of the threat aircraft and to avoid colliding with it. To assess the algorithm's performance, the predictions are compared with predictions based solely on position estimates for a variety of encounter scenarios. Simulation and experimental results indicate that trajectory prediction using orientation estimates provides quicker response to a change in the threat aircraft trajectory and results in better prediction and avoidance performance.
Time Spectral Adjoint Based Design for Flutter and Limit Cycle Oscillation Suppression
Prasad, Rachit (Virginia Tech, 2020-05-27)
When designing aircraft wings shapes, it is important to ensure that the flight envelope does not overlap with regions of flutter or Limit Cycle Oscillation (LCO). A quick assessment of these dynamic aeroelastic for various design candidates is key to successful design. Flutter based design requires the sensitivity of flutter parameters to be known with the respect of design parameters. Traditionally, frequency domain based methods have been used to predict flutter characteristics and its sensitivity. However, this approach is only applicable for linear or linearized models and cannot be applied to systems undergoing LCO or other nonlinear effects. Though the time accurate approach can be implemented to overcome this problem, it is computationally expensive. Also, the unsteady adjoint formulation for sensitivity analysis, requires the state and adjoint variables to be stored at every time step, which prohibitively increases the memory requirement. In this work, these problems have been overcome by implementing a time spectral method based approach to compute flutter onset, LCOs and their design sensitivities in a computationally efficient manner. The time spectral based formulation approximates the solution as a discrete Fourier series and directly solves for the periodic steady state, leading to a steady formulation. This can lead to the time spectral approach to be faster than the time accurate approach. More importantly, the steady formulation of the time spectral method also eliminates the memory issues faced by the unsteady adjoint formulation. The time spectral based flutter/LCO prediction method was used to predict flutter and LCO characteristics of the AGARD 445.6 wing and pitch/plunge airfoil section with NACA 64A010 airfoil. Furthermore, the adjoint based sensitivity analysis was used to carry out aerodynamic shape optimization, with an objective of maximizing the flutter velocity with and without constraints on the drag coefficient. The resulting designs show significant increase in the flutter velocity and the corresponding LCO velocity profile. The resulting airfoils display a greater sensitivity to the transonic shock which in turn leads to greater aerodynamic damping and hence leading to an increase in flutter velocity.

Browsing by Author "Choi, Seongim Sarah"

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