The Second ICASE/LaRC Industry Roundtable: Session Proceedings

The second ICASE/LaRC Industry Roundtable was held October 7-9, 1996 at the Williamsburg Hospitality House, Williamsburg, Virginia. Like the first roundtable in 1994, this meeting had two objectives: (1) to expose ICASE and LaRC scientists to industrial research agendas; and (2) to acquaint industry with the capabilities and technology available at ICASE, LaRC and academic partners of ICASE. Nineteen sessions were held in three parallel tracks. Of the 170 participants, over one third were affiliated with various industries. Proceedings from the different sessions are summarized in this report

CFD simulations in support of wind tunnel testing

CFD and wind tunnel simulations are complementary due to their inherent limitations. Wind tunnel tests apply to any hypothesis, but are limited by the tunnel wall interference/blockage, the model details, and even the distortion of the model. CFD are not limited in any of these ways, but limited in speed and memory and the lack of determinate set of equations. Theoretically, CFD can provide an assessment of any problem in fluid dynamics (Direct Numerical Simulation), but the requirements of speed and memory are far from being met presently, or even in the foreseeable future. Of necessity, present CFD applications, however, employ a turbulence model, which limits its application due to the problems in accuracy and reliability. Given the power of CFD however, the work contained herein makes use of the advantages of CFD and also the wind tunnel, to form a powerful facility for aerodynamic test, i.e., CFD was used to complement and enhance the wind tunnel test, so producing an integrated test facility. A very important aspect in this work is that CFD was used to investigate the blockage correction for wind tunnel tests. By using CFD, the blockage correction could be made directly, in terms of representing the test model and tunnel walls in high fidelity. Meanwhile, the effect of support system on the test model was also investigated by CFD. The numerical results showed significant effect of the strut on the test model in the Argyll Wind Tunnel (Glasgow University), and an interesting result showed that different positions of support system had different effects. This research aimed to utilise CFD to support wind tunnel testing, and its ultimate purpose is to form a powerful facility for aerodynamic test by combining CFD and wind tunnel. The contributions are summarised as follows: The calibrations of wind tunnel by CFD simulations; A proposed improvement for moving belt system by CFD tools; Blockage correction of wind tunnel by CFD method; and The confirmation of CFD results by wind tunnel model test

GTTC Future of Ground Testing Meta-Analysis of 20 Documents

National research, development, test, and evaluation ground testing capabilities in the United States are at risk. There is a lack of vision and consensus on what is and will be needed, contributing to a significant threat that ground test capabilities may not be able to meet the national security and industrial needs of the future. To support future decisions, the AIAA Ground Testing Technical Committees (GTTC) Future of Ground Test (FoGT) Working Group selected and reviewed 20 seminal documents related to the application and direction of ground testing. Each document was reviewed, with the content main points collected and organized into sections in the form of a gap analysis current state, future state, major challenges/gaps, and recommendations. This paper includes key findings and selected commentary by an editing team

Teamwork collaboration around simulation data in an industrial context

2013 - 2014Nowadays even more small, medium and large enterprises are world-wide and com- pete on a global market. In order to face the new challenges, industries have multiple co-located and geographically dispersed teams that work across time, space, and organ- isational boundaries. A virtual team or a dispersed team is a group of geographically, organisationally and/or time dispersed knowledge workers who coordinate their work using electronic technologies to accomplish a common goal. The advent of Internet and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) technologies can reduce the distances between these teams and are used to support the collaboration among them. The topic of this thesis concerns the engineering dispersed teams and their collaboration within enterprises. In this context, the contributions of this thesis are the following: I was able to (1) identify the key collaborative requirements analysing a real use case of two engineering dispersed teams within Fiat Chrysler Automobiles; (2) address each of them with an integrated, extensible and modular architecture; (3) implement a working in- dustrial prototype called Floasys to collect, centralise, search, and share simulations as well as automate repetitive, error-prone and time-consuming tasks like the document generation; (4) design a tool called ExploraTool to visually explore a repository of sim- ulations provided by Floasys, and (5) identify the possible extensions of this work to other contexts (like aeronautic, rail and naval sectors). The rst research aim of this work is the analysis of the key collaborative require- ments within a real industrial use case of geographically dispersed teams. In order to gather these requirements, I worked closely with two geographically separated en- gineering teams in Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA): one team located in Pomigliano D'Arco (Italy) and the other one in Torino (Italy). Both teams use computer numerical Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulations to design vehicle products simulating physical phenomenons, such as vehicle aerodynamic and its drag coefficient, or the in- ternal ow for the passengers thermal comfort. The applied methodology to collect the collaborative and engineering requirements is based on an extensive literature review, on site directly observations, stakeholders' interviews and an user survey. The identi ed key collaborative requirements as actions to perform to improve the collaboration among dispersed teams are: centralise simulation data, provide metadata over simulation data, provide search facility, simulation data versioning, and data sharing... [edited by Author]XIII n.s

Teamwork collaboration around CAE models in an industrial context

2015 - 2016Medium and Large Companies must compete every day in a global context. To achieve greater efficiency in their products/processes they are forced to globalize by opening multiple locations in geographically distant places. In this context, people from the same team or different teams must work together regardless of the time zone and where they are located. Therefore, a "virtual" team consists of groups of geographically distant people who can coordinate with the help of new technologies. The tools and methodologies supporting "Computer Supported Cooperative Work" (CSCW) can facilitate collaboration by reducing distance and time related issues. The main goals CSCW aims to achieve within a complex organization are listed below: • Schedule, track, and chart the steps in a project as it is being completed (Project Management) • Share, review, approve or reject project proposals from other workgroup members (Authoring Systems) • Collaborative management of tasks and documents within a knowledge-based business process (Workflow Management) • Collect, organize, manage, and share various forms of information (Knowledge Management) • Collaborative bookmarking engine to tag, organize, share, and search enterprise data (Enterprise Bookmarking) • Collect, organize, manage and share information associated with the delivery of a project (Extranet Systems) • Quickly share company information to members within a company via Internet (Intranet Systems) • Organize social relations of groups (Social Network) • Collaborate and share structured data and information (Online SpreadSheet) This work is based on the main objectives outlined through a specific research experience that verifies compliance and ensures its applicability. The real context consists of virtual team of engineers and the way they cooperate within the automotive industry. The research “iter” can be summarized as follows: (1) the main collaborative and engineering requirements have been identified by referring to a real use case within Fiat Chrysler Automobiles; (2) each requirement has been met by implementing an integrated, modular and extensible architecture; (3) Floasys platform for collecting, centralizing and sharing simulations has been designed, implemented and tested; (4) a tool called ExploraTool has been designed to visually explore a simulation repository within Floasys; (5) the possible extension of the platform has been identified in terms of multidisciplinarity and multisectorality; (6) downstream of the whole process, all the requirements a CSCW intended to meet were verified. The initial phase of the work has focused on collecting collaborative requirements and related needs that emerge when different virtual teams find themselves collaborating to pursue a common result. The collaborative requirements identified to support collaboration between geographically remote teams are: centralizing simulation data, providing annotation and adding metadata to files, providing a search engine for simulations completed by other analysts, providing data versioning and support their sharing. In line with the requirements identified, a collaborative platform prototype (CSCW) called Floasys was developed. Floasys customers are all industries using CAE simulations to design their products, so the automotive, aeronautical and naval industries, etc. Floasys collects simulation data, stores them in open XML format and centralizes them into a shared repository; It also provides additional services on collected data stored in open format, such as the ability to annotate files or search within the repository regardless of the simulator with which they were generated. It is extremely useful to be able to retrieve simulations from other members of the same team or different teams in order to compare the performance of a current project. In order to provide these services, various aspects must be considered: surely the services listed above must be immersed in an existing business environment with existing practices, workflows and software systems. To bring a concrete example, the only centralization of simulation data involves communication with existing simulation software by mitigating the problem of Vendor Lock-In, which is the strong dependence on the simulators themselves. From an architectural point of view, Floasys meets the non-functional extensibility and modularity requirements. This way the system can be tailored to the needs of customers, open to meet future needs and be used in other departments. The modular and extensible Floasys architecture was obtained based on the concept of plug-in. Although the research activity directly concerns the automotive industry, the requirements and the difficulties described are common to other sectors as described in the literature. So many of the considerations made in this work and the solutions adopted can be reused for other types of simulation as well as for data obtained from experiments. Finally, within Floasys, an interactive tool called "ExploraTool" was integrated for viewing, exploring, and querying simulation repositories. Although the idea of this tool was born in the context of simulation repository navigation, it is generic and can be used with any dataset. The tool is based on Eulero-Venn diagrams. The universe is the set of all simulations stored in one or more repositories. Simulation groups are represented by grafted ellipses. Using this tool, analysts can explore the repository through drill-down and roll-up operations to get more or less detail. Going down in the hierarchy, the user filters the items within the dataset and performs a graphical query. In this way, the user explores the repository by finally obtaining two or more simulations to be compared. After the design, implementation and implementation phase, the tool was tested with real users to gain data on its usability. [edited by author]XV n.s

12th EASN International Conference on "Innovation in Aviation & Space for opening New Horizons"

Epoxy resins show a combination of thermal stability, good mechanical performance, and durability, which make these materials suitable for many applications in the Aerospace industry. Different types of curing agents can be utilized for curing epoxy systems. The use of aliphatic amines as curing agent is preferable over the toxic aromatic ones, though their incorporation increases the flammability of the resin. Recently, we have developed different hybrid strategies, where the sol-gel technique has been exploited in combination with two DOPO-based flame retardants and other synergists or the use of humic acid and ammonium polyphosphate to achieve non-dripping V-0 classification in UL 94 vertical flame spread tests, with low phosphorous loadings (e.g., 1-2 wt%). These strategies improved the flame retardancy of the epoxy matrix, without any detrimental impact on the mechanical and thermal properties of the composites. Finally, the formation of a hybrid silica-epoxy network accounted for the establishment of tailored interphases, due to a better dispersion of more polar additives in the hydrophobic resin

Computational fluid dynamics based optimisation of emergency response vehicles

Formal optimisation studies of the aerodynamic design of Emergency Response Vehicles, typically encountered within the United Kingdom, were undertaken. The objectives of the study were to optimise the aerodynamics of the Emergency Response Vehicles such as Ambulance and Police cars, in terms of drag force. A combination of wind tunnel tests and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were used to analyse the flow field and aerodynamic characteristics of Emergency Response Vehicles. The experimental data were used to validate the computer simulations and the good agreement observed gave confidence in the results obtained. Results from computer simulations on the scale models and full-scale models, were also characteristically similar to those of the validated scale model. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was combined with an efficient optimisation framework to minimize the drag force of three different types of Emergency Response Vehicles, Ambulance Van Conversion, Police Van Conversion and Police Sedan car Conversion. The benefits of employing an airfoil-based roof design and Bezier curve fitting approach which minimizes the deleterious aerodynamic effects of the required front and rear light-bars, were investigated. Optimal Latin Hypercube (OLH) Design of Experiments, the Multipoint Approximation Method (MAM) and surrogate modelling were used for the optimisation. Optimisation results demonstrated a clear improvement of the aerodynamic design of the Emergency Response Vehicles named above. It was also clearly demonstrated that improving the aerodynamic design of Emergency Response Vehicles roof offers a significant opportunity for reducing the fuel consumption and emissions for Emergency Response Vehicles

CFD Vision 2030 Study: A Path to Revolutionary Computational Aerosciences

This report documents the results of a study to address the long range, strategic planning required by NASA's Revolutionary Computational Aerosciences (RCA) program in the area of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), including future software and hardware requirements for High Performance Computing (HPC). Specifically, the "Vision 2030" CFD study is to provide a knowledge-based forecast of the future computational capabilities required for turbulent, transitional, and reacting flow simulations across a broad Mach number regime, and to lay the foundation for the development of a future framework and/or environment where physics-based, accurate predictions of complex turbulent flows, including flow separation, can be accomplished routinely and efficiently in cooperation with other physics-based simulations to enable multi-physics analysis and design. Specific technical requirements from the aerospace industrial and scientific communities were obtained to determine critical capability gaps, anticipated technical challenges, and impediments to achieving the target CFD capability in 2030. A preliminary development plan and roadmap were created to help focus investments in technology development to help achieve the CFD vision in 2030