Dr. Marco Fossati
University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland
McGill University, CFD Laboratory

The design of future airliners and access-to-space systems is faced with many challenges and requirements, the most compelling being increased safety and aerothermodynamic performance, reduced fuel consumption / emissions and minimum acoustic signature. Numerical approaches based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) have become a widely used tool for aerodynamic design, but unfortunately the cost to obtain accurate CFD solutions is quite high and can easily become prohibitive if multiple different configurations and design solutions have to be evaluated. A numerical approach to cost reduction referred to as modal-based Reduced Order Modeling (ROM) or Reduced Basis Modeling will be discussed that uses modal identification as a means to reduce the computational complexity while preserving almost entirely the physics of the problem. Modal ROM uses an existing set of observations of the flow field to identify a small number of fundamental flow structures, also known as reduced basis or modes, that can be combined togheter to make fast predictions of the aircraft aerodynamic environment with CFD-like accuracy. The mathematical and numerical theory behind the approach will be discussed in its most relevant aspects and the application of the approach to the parametric analysis of steady and unsteady aerodynamic problems will also be presented.

Location : von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics