AIRCRAFT CANOPY TRAJECTORY SIMULATION MODEL

We propose to conduct a comprehensive feasiblity and assessment study for relevant Navy canopy ejection simulations using an advanced unstructured grid flow solver. The results of the Phase I study will be sued to guide and enhance the development of acomprehensive interactive canopy ejection simulation capability for Navy applications. The study will be conducted to show the feasibility, accuracy, turn-around times required, and shortcomings of the current capabilities. The study will investigate how state-of-the-art CFD methodologies model the whole range of canopy release scenarios, thruster and ejection boundary condition models, CFD modeling of thin surface and topology changes (i.e., Boolean operations). The study will also examine the state-of-the-art of post-wake 6 DOF modeling, user interfaces with CFD models, and post-processing capabilities. As part of this study, we also propose to model a single event of canopy ejection, to be selected in consultation with the Navy. This simulation will be carried out using FEFL096, and adaptive, ALE, moving body, central and upwind flux limited Euler and navieer-Stokes solver on unstructured adaptive tetrahedral grids. The tasks envisioned for Phase II include: enhancement of grid generation capabiities, better preconditioners for iterative flow solvers, increased physical realism for viscous flows via better turbulence models, faster regridding and interpolation strategies, link to a structureal dynamics methodlogy, and visualization tools that are better suited for canopy ejection problems. These tasks, which we expect to be guided with the Phase I results, are detailed below. The end product will provide the Navy with an interactive prediction methodology capable of the cost-effective analysis of canopy ejetion phenomena.