Improved geometry modeling for high fidelity parametric design

Advanced multidisciplinary physics-based design and analysis capabilities are required to pursue the revolutionary vehicle and technology concepts needed to meet the goals of the aerospace industry for the next 10-30 years. The multidisciplinary physics critical to advancing aerospace technology all have one common bond, the shape, size, and form of the underlying aircraft - its geometry. An aircraft shape is the natural starting point for multidisciplinary analysis and optimization (MDAO). Vehicle Sketch Pad (VSP) is an aircraft geometry tool for rapid evaluation of advanced design concepts which was developed by NASA and is available to industry at large. VSP allows designers to express their design in terms of engineering parameters. The results of design choices are presented in real-time to the designer. In this research, VSP has been extended in two major ways to improve the designer's ability to include high fidelity geometry based analysis in the design process. The first major improvement was the addition of a new high-quality surface meshing capability for VSP. The second major improvement was the addition of intuitive parametric representations of internal structure for VSP including the ability to convey that representation to appropriate structural modeling tools. Copyright © 2010 by James R. Gloudemans.