Rapid CFD: A Flexible Rapid Computational Fluid Dynamics Platform

Report developed under SBIR contract for topic AF19B-013 Modern, Rapid, Usable, Lower Order Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Development for Aerodynamic Analysis. The Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) is tasked with maintaining air superiority for the warfighter through research and development of aerodynamic technologies. This research includes configuration aerodynamics, flow control device development, wind tunnel testing, and high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD). However, current methods of CFD analysis are user time intensive and require extensive computational resources over hours or even days to complete a simulation. We completed a proof-of-concept platform, RapidCFD, RapidCFD includes a reduced-order CFD model and a custom ParaView plugin with for problem definition and setup and results analysis and visualization. Our RapidCFD Solver executes simulations in less than one second and less than five minutes for two-dimensional three-dimensional geometries, respectively. Our ParaView plugin successfully demonstrates the potential for leveraging ParaView to expand on these results in Phase II to create an end-to-end simulation workflow and improve the RapidCFD Solver for aerospace applications.