Simulation Driven Design is a promising approach to generate quality affordable aircraft configurations—a must for enhancing U.S. competitiveness in an increasingly globalized marketplace. This approach is aimed at producing virtual prototypes which can faithfully represent the functional and operational characteristics of a real aircraft to be built. The traditional design practices are inherently inefficient and expensive as they rely on extensive scale model testing to generate data for configuration design, and on developing physical prototypes to verify functional and operational characteristic. SDD derives its efficiencies and cost-effectiveness by combining the ever increasing power of computers with increasing sophistication of modeling and simulation methodologies based on high-fidelity physics-based computational methods. However, several challenges need to be overcome to realize the promise of SDD. For example, our inability to cost-effectively assess the credibility of computational solutions is a serious impediment. Developing physics-based models that are wellsuited for rapid-turnaround conceptual design studies in a multidisciplinary design, analysis and optimization environment is another. Devising effective strategies to tackle such challenges is the primary focus of this research thrust.
