Real-Time Simulation Methodology for Rotor-Airwake Interactions Navy SBIR FY2010.3 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2010.3 Topic No.: N103-195 Topic Title: Real-Time Simulation Methodology for Rotor-Airwake Interactions Proposal No.: N103-195-0260 Firm: Cascade Technologies Incorporated 2445 Faber Place #100 Palo Alto, California 94303 Contact: Bono Wasitho Phone: (650) 521-0243 Web Site: www.turbulentflow.com Abstract: The overall objective of this proposal is to develop a physics based methodology that is capable of simulating two-way coupled, non-linear interaction of ship-airwake and helicopter rotor-wake in flow-through in a real-time fashion, and to demonstrate the prototype method in the Manned Flight Simulator (MFS) for a piloted simulation. We focus on demonstrating the critical importance of taking fully into account the non-linear two-ways interactions between the ship airwake and the rotor-wake of a helicopter landing on a ship deck, and that the simulation can proceed in real time by exploiting graphics-processing-unit (GPU) based parallel computation techniques. To achieve this objective, we rely upon the following technology components, 1) GPU based parallelism, 2) adaptive vorticity confinement (AVC) technique, 3) efficient and flexible rotor models, 4) efficient numerical method for block-structured inviscid flow system 5) dynamic/moving overset grid to model rotor in maneuver 6) Simulink based coupling of CFD and flight-simulator In Phase-1 the feasibility of the above real-time methodology will be demonstrated for realistic rotor-airwake interactions with the rotor-wake in stationary position in the vicinity of a generic ship superstructure. In Phase II, the proposed real-time modeling approach is extended to account for the circulation effects of a helicopter moving through the ship airwake in real-time. A decomposition technique of linear and non-linear regimes of interaction is employed to maximize computational efficiency. The software enhancement and its validation will be carried out entirely in GPU based computational framework. Benefits: The successful completion of the overall project, through Phase-I and Phase-II, will lead to the development and validation of a flexible multi-fidelity simulation framework that can run on CPUs, for memory intensive high fidelity simulations, and on GPUs, for reduced fidelity, yet compute intensive, real-time simulations. This will produce more realistic CFD driven aircraft responses to pilot input and hence increase confidence in pilot training by flight simulator. The use of GPUs as an integral part of the proposed technology also opens the possibility of installing the CFD algorithm directly within the flight simulator, short-cutting the pilot-in-the-loop simulation. GPU has already been an integral part of flight-simulator technology. Finally, the fast turn-around time of the methodology makes it suitable as a function evaluation tool in design optimization. The end software product can be flexibly delivered as an integrated CPU-GPU system or standalone CPU/GPU based software. The GPU module will be sufficiently generic to be plugged into an independent CPU host solver. Return