Back to Aerodynamic Design of Aircraft with Computational Software
Welcome to the On-line resources for Aerodynamic Design of Aircraft with Computational Software. The guiding principle for the book is learning by computing with ready-made software. This learning-by-doing approach to teaching aerodynamic design is accomplished by working with exercises, tutorials, and extended projects and using the computational tools under guidance. Experience gained in carrying out these exercises will help students when completing a term project or a capstone design course or writing a senior-year, masters, or PhD thesis. The hands-on assignments are presented not in the book itself, but on this website. Useful public-domain software, which has been used for many of the examples in this book, can also be found here. Downloads of software and documentation as well as some links to the home and developer pages for the different packages are provided.
The Airinnova website (here) provides on the “Software Resources” page a Virtual Machine with all software installed and m-file or python scripts for some of the tasks.
A directory structure following the chapters is available as a downloadable zipfile below. It follows the tabs for the chapter material on this page, and libraries necessary are linked already in the scripts. Don’t move them unless you are sure how those connections should be set. The directory structure can be copied to the VM., The exercises needing only the Matlab or its clone Octave package – Ch’s 1, 3 and 4 – can be run outside the VM. Most Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, and of course the VM, come with Octave but if you run a Windows you must install Matlab or Octave first.
Example: Optimization tasks in Ch. 1
For instance, Ch. 1 gives an overview of algorithmic design by non-linear optimization, and the scripts in .../Ch1 opt1.m and opt2.m are ready-to-run, by starting Octave in GUI mode in a terminal window:
>octave --gui &which lets the student browse, inspect, modify, and run the m-files interactively. The script can also be executed in a terminal by
>octave opt1.mwhich runs the calculation and exits. This is less convenient since any plots generated will be closed. The Ch.1 scripts need the optim octave toolbox which is installed in the VM but must be loaded at the start of any octave session that wants to use it. This also is taken care of in the scripts given.
The next task is for the student to modify the scripts and the relevant functions (here objf.m and constr.m) to solve another performance optimization task. The “real deal” in Ch.1 is shape optimization. That requires flow simulation by CFD and such examples will have to wait until Ch.3 in connection with exposition of the VLM flow model.
Modus operandi
In a standard course the instructor will provide a walk-through and demo to show how it all works. Then for each lecture a list of relevant tutorials, labs, self-study activities with review questions will normally also be provided by the instructor as the lecture series unfolds. The questions usually require the students to read parts of the chapters which have not been covered in detail in lecture form.
Ch 1: 1 Introduction to Aircraft Aerodynamic Design [pdf] Ch 2: 2 AirFlow Physics and Mathematical Models [pdf] Ch 3: 3 Concepts and Computational Models in Wing Design 106 [pdf] Ch 4: 4 Finite Volume Schemes for the Euler Equations 146 [pdf] Ch 5: 5 AirFrame CAD and Automated Grid Generation [pdf] Ch 6: 6 CFD for Steady and Unsteady Flows 226 [pdf] Ch 7: 7 Fast Computation of Airfoil Flow [pdf] Ch 8: 8 Airfoil Design Considerations 289 [pdf] Ch 9: 9 Wing Design Considerations [pdf] Ch 10: 10 Configuration Development and Flying Qualities 375 [pdf] Ch 11: 11 Airload-Structure Interaction and Aeroelastic Effects 425 [pdf]
Exercises and Labs
The documentations, libraries and m-file scripts are organized chapterwise like the exercise texts above. The whole directory structure is in a zip-file here: [zipfile]