Research Fellows
Dheeraj Agarwal
Early Stage Researcher 10 at Queen's University of Belfast
As it is common for industrial CAD models to be defined by hundreds (or even thousands) of parameters, a computationally efficient approach (which can be run in parallel to the CFD analysis) for calculating design velocity is required if it is to be used for optimization. Herein, the design velocity is calculated using a finite difference approach based on the CAD model before and after a parameter perturbation. The CAD geometries are represented using a surface tessellation of linear triangular elements referred as faceting. The displacement of the model due to a parameter perturbation is approximated by calculating how much a point at the centre of each facet in the unperturbed model must move to reside on the boundary of the perturbed model. The overall framework for the computation of design velocities is shown in Fig. 1. The design velocities for the nozzle guide vane component (obtained from Rolls-Royce) is shown in Fig. 2.
Fig .1. Flow chart for design velocity computation
Fig. 2 Design velocity contours for Nozzle guide vane.
** More details about the approach and its implementation for optimizing the CAD design can be found in the following paper
Agarwal D., Robinson T.T., Armstrong C.G., Marques S., Vasilopoulos I., Meyer M., Parametric design velocity computation for CAD-based design optimization using adjoint methods, Engineering with Computers, Vol. 34(2), 2018, Pg-225-239.