Isogeometric Analysis for Vertical Flight Applications

This paper addresses some practical aspects of making Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) more accessible to design engineers and analysts. An interactive parametric design-through-analysis platform is proposed to help design engineers and analysts make more effective use of IGA to improve their product design and performance. We develop several Rhino 3D plug-ins with a user-friendly interface to take input design parameters, generate appropriate surface and/or volumetric models, perform mechanical analysis, and visualize the solution fields, all within the same Computer-Aided Design (CAD) program. As part of this effort we propose and implement graphical generative algorithms for IGA model creation based on Grasshopper 3D, a visual programming interface to Rhino 3D. The developed platform is demonstrated on two structural mechanics examples—an actual wind turbine blade and a model of an integrally bladed rotor (IBR), and a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation example - a water twister. In the example of IBR we demonstrate how the Rhino 3D functionality may be utilized to create conforming volumetric models for IGA.