Computational Simulations of Electric Propulsion Aircraft: The X-57 Maxwell

Speaker: Jared Duensing, Science and Technology Corporation / NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division
June 13, 2019

Presentation

Abstract

The X-57 Maxwell is NASA’s latest electric airplane concept that has been simulated using CFD to develop multiple aerodynamic databases. Using the structured overset grid solver within the Launch Ascent and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) solver framework and the unstructured polyhedral grid solver in Star-CCM+, aerodynamic predictions have been made for multiple aircraft configurations. In order to validate the predictions, comparisons were made between the CFD solutions and experimental data collected in the 12-foot Low-Speed Wind Tunnel at NASA Langley Research Center. This talk presents one possible approach to establishing best practices for mesh resolution, numerical discretization, turbulence modeling, and propulsion modeling prior to database generation. Preliminary database results have shown that these practices can potentially reduce error in X-57 aerodynamic loads and moments relative to experiment by up to 14%. Sample database results with and without propulsion will also be presented and discussed.

Biography

Jared Duensing received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in aerospace engineering with a focus on aeronautics from Arizona State University (2014 and 2015 respectively). Since then, he has been employed as a research engineer with the Computational Aerosciences Branch of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division at NASA Ames Research Center. His work focuses mainly on applied computational fluid dynamics. He has been involved with work on the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD), Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW), and the X-57 Maxwell distributed electric propulsion aircraft concepts.

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