Airborne Science-Driven CFD of Small UAS: Scalable Airframe and Ice Accretion Simulations
Speaker: Robert Comstock, Sean Lam, and Jared Sagaga, Student Interns, NASA Ames Research Center
Presentation
Seminar video is unavailable due to technical difficulties.
Abstract
The Earth Science Division at NASA Ames Research Center uses a wide variety of aircraft both manned and unmanned for the acquisition of scientific atmospheric, terrestrial, and oceanic data. In the summer of 2017 a trio of interns started to investigate some science-driven questions for small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that can be answered by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approaches. This seminar summarizes three of the CFD projects that will support future Earth Science missions.
The first part of this talk will discuss CFD simulation and initial tradeoff study of modular, scalable small UAS - in this case using the example of a “FrankenRaven” that can be assembled into multiple configurations like LEGO bricks. Modular UAS enable optimization of the airframe around a given science instrument payload, as opposed to traditional approaches where a fixed airframe highly constrains the payload. For this study CFD analysis of multiple aircraft configurations using STAR-CCM+ on the Pleiades supercomputer were used to characterize flight performance and explore the multivariable tradeoff space. The results of this analysis contributed to better understand the tradeoff space of modular UAS. The study also provided analysis of an example pod-mounted payload to better understand its limitations as a platform for future science missions.
The second part will investigate the ice accretion on small low-speed UAS at various flight and icing conditions by testing them in the Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) at NASA Glenn Research Center. The motivation behind UAS icing research stems from an increased demand of de-icing systems in UAS for missions in the Arctic region. This experiment also allowed for validation of the LEWICE3D research code for simulating ice accretion on three-dimensional aircraft surfaces, as UAS have never been tested at the IRT or simulated on LEWICE3D before. Different strategies of comparison between experimental and simulated data were explored. This data set from the variety of test articles will contribute to future development of de-icing systems.
Biographies
Robert Comstock is an undergraduate aerospace engineering student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly SLO) concentrating in aeronautics. He has done aerodynamics design work and analysis for multiple clubs including Formula SAE as well as Cal Poly’s rocket club, specializing in doing CFD simulations for both internal and external aerodynamics problems. He is currently employed by the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAERI) at NASA Ames Research Center.
Sean Lam is an undergraduate aeronautics and astronautics engineering student at the University of Washington. He is currently employed by the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAERI) at NASA Ames Research Center, and is a student engineer at the Kirsten Wind Tunnel on the UW campus, which performs many commercial/defense aerodynamic tests. He is involved in all aspects of wind tunnel testing including model installation, calibrations, operations, and data reduction.
Jared Sagaga received his B.Sc in 2016 and M.Sc in 2017 from San Jose State University in aerospace engineering. His master’s work was modeling, simulating, and analyzing the plasma blackout phenomenon that arises during re-entry, including an investigation on techniques to mitigate effects of the plasma sheath. He currently is conducting CFD analysis and hardware-software integration testing at the the Autonomous Systems Development Laboratory (ASDL) at NASA Ames Research Center.