Research Interest

Simulation Driven Design

Simulation Driven Design is a promising approach for generating quality affordable aircraft configurations. Realizing maximum benefits of this approach is a must for maintaining and enhancing U.S. competitiveness in an increasingly globalized marketplace.  

This approach is aimed at producing virtual prototypes which can faithfully represent the functional and operational characteristics of a real aircraft to be built.  The traditional design practices are inherently inefficient and expensive as they rely on extensive testing of physical scale models to generate data for configuration design, and on developing physical prototypes to verify functional and operational characteristic.

In contrast to the traditional design practices, SDD promises to be highly efficient and cost-effective as it relies on combining the ever increasing speed and power of computers with increasing sophistication of physics-based computational simulation methodologies. However, several challenges need to be overcome to realize the promise of SDD. For example, our inability to cost-effectively assess the credibility of computational solutions is a serious impediment. A solution is credible if it faithfully replicates reality. Another challenge is developing methodologies that are well suited for rapid-turnaround conceptual design studies in a multidisciplinary design, analysis and optimization environment is another.  Devising effective strategies to tackle such challenges is the primary focus of this research thrust.