Efficient Hybrid Wake Modelling for Advanced Configuration Design and Analysis

Advanced and Urban Air Mobility aircraft development is revolutionizing the aerospace industry by providing a realizable path towards affordable on-demand passenger-carrying operations in metropolitan areas. Many aircraft concepts are in development, and as they start to mature, there is a need for higher fidelity design and analysis tools that have improved modeling of component-wake interactions. Unfortunately, the current generation of CFD-based high fidelity tools is unsuitable for many daily design and analysis applications due to computational cost, expertise and setup requirements. Conversely, current design tools often rely on empirical relationships to represent many interactional effects, or become increasingly inaccurate in regions where the wakes trailed and shed from aerodynamic component becomes highly distorted. This paper describes recent work by Continuum Dynamics, Inc. to develop a mid-fidelity analysis tool, embedded within the CHARM analysis package, which brings CFD-class interactional aerodynamics analysis capabilities to aspects of the design cycle without the cost and expertise requirements of contemporary CFD-based analysis.