Robust and high-performance tools for MDO

The development of future sustainable aircraft heavily relies on the design and integration of advanced propulsion systems. However, the design of these systems are challenging due to the tightly coupled interactions between the aerodynamic and the propulsion disciplines. My research focuses on enabling these advanced technologies using aeropropulsive design optimization, in which the aerodynamic and propulsion system designs are optimized in a coupled manner. In this process, I use multiple robust and high-performance computational tools including the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver we have been developing in the MDO Lab at the University of Michigan. In this talk, I will cover some recent advancements in the field of CFD-based aeropropulsive design optimization and the computational methodologies we have been using for this work.