The Impact of High Performance

Computing and Computational

Fluid Dynamics on Aircraft
Development

Edward N. Tinoco
Technical Fellow
Enabling Technology & Research
Airplane Configuration, Integration & Performance
Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

Tools for Aerodynamic Development

of Aircraft Configurations
Flight Test

Wind Tunnel

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

Computational Fluid Dynamics

In
D cre
ec a
re sin
as g
in C
g om
Em p
pi uta
ric ti
is on
m al
C
om

pl
ex
ity
,

Aerodynamic flows are characterized as compressible,

viscous (high Reynolds number turbulent) flows.
Direct Numerical Simulation
Large Eddy Simulation
Detached Eddy Simulation w/RANS

Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes

Euler

1980s

Full Potential
With Coupled Boundary Layer
Linear Potential (Panel Methods)
Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

1990s

1970-80s

1960s

2080
2045

2000s

Practical
Limit for
Complete
Airplane
Applications

Timeline of the Use of Computational

Fluid Dynamics in Aircraft Development
2-D Linear
Potential

1960

1 MFLOP
1965

2-D Airfoil
Development

Supersonic
Transport

Wing-Body
Full-Potential
Transonic Analysis

General 3-D
Linear Potential

Linearized
Supersonic

1970

10 MFLOP

100 MFLOP
1980

1975
Joint CFD/Wind Tunnel
Studies unlock the secret
of nacelle/wing interferencex drag

1985

767 757

737-300

1980 state of the art

General 3-D
Full-Potential
Transonic Analysis
1 GFLOP
1985

Full-Potential
Transonic Design

10 GFLOP
1990

21% thicker faster wing

than 757, 767 technology.
Best economics in class

Copyright
2009
2009 Boeing.
Boeing. All
All rights
rights reserved.
reserved.
Copyright

Wing-Body
General 3-D
Multipoint
Reynolds Averaged optimization Reynolds Averaged
Navier-Stokes
design
Navier-Stokes

Unstructured
Adaptive Grid
3-D N-S

100 GFLOP
2000

2010

1995

777

Modern close coupled

nacelle installation, 0.02
Mach faster than 737-200
Enabled by CFD

737NG

Highly constrained wing

design. Faster wing than
737-300. Highest selling
commercial airplane ever

2005

787 747-8

Faster and more efficient than previous

medium size aircraft

lowest operating
costs and best
economics of any
large airplane

What is the Measure of Value in

Computational Fluid Dynamics?
The value of reduced wind tunnel testing due to the use of CFD

Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

Wind Tunnel Hours

Wind Tunnel Hours

In the past 20 years the use of CFD has provided significant cost
savings

The Challenge
The Flight Envelope
One complete airplane development
requires about 50,000 to 100,000
aerodynamic simulations.
Flight test is used to validate and
certify that the aircraft is safe over the
entire range flight conditions
mandated by law.
The challenge is to further push the
Velocity - VEAS
use of CFD into the edges of the flight
envelope.
Higher quality data earlier in the design phase for Multidisciplinary Design
Optimization big driver on reducing cost
Good enough aerodynamic data base to reduce number of design
cycles
Higher quality full scale flight simulation avoid costly surprises in flight
test
Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

What is the Measure of Value in

Computational Fluid Dynamics?
The value of reduced wind tunnel testing due to the use of CFD
In the past 20 years the use of CFD has provided significant cost
savings. This is a small fraction of the value CFD delivered.

A much greater value of CFD in the Commercial arena is..

The

added value of the product due to the use of CFD

Achieving design solutions that are otherwise unreachable.

Shortening the design development process.
Getting it right the first time.
NOT getting it right the first time results in:
Very lengthy and costly development to fix it
Possible cancelation/termination of the program
Putting the Company at risk
Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

Extra Material

Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

Boeing Puget Sound

HPC Environment

2001
Cray T916
SGI Origin
~0.100 Tflops
Full Potential + BL
e.g. Tranair

Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.

2009
Cray X1
PC clusters
~50 Tflops
Navier-Stokes
e.g. CFD++, CFL3D,
OVERFLOW

CFD Contributions to 787

Reynolds-Number Corrections

Wind-Tunnel Design Validation

Vertical Tail and

Aft Body Design

Aeroelastics
High-Lift Wing
Design
Control-Surface
Failure Analysis

APU Inlet
And Ducting

APU and Propulsion

Fire Suppression
Design For
Stability &
Control

Planform
Design

Wing-Tip Design

Wing
Controls

High-Speed Wing
Design

Flutter

Vortex Generators
Icing

Cabin
Noise

Cab Design
Interior
Air
Quality

Wing-Body
ECS Inlet
Air-Data
Design Fairing Design

ExhaustSystem
Avionics Cooling
System
Design
Inlet Design
Location
Buffet
Thrust-Reverser
Inlet Certification
Boundary
Engine/Airframe
Design
Engine-Bay Thermal
Community
Integration
Design for FOD
Analysis
Noise
Prevention
Nacelle Design

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Cost and Flowtime Characteristics of

Wind Tunnels and CFD
The use of new CFD is driven by desperation.
Desperation to remain competitive!
One complete airplane development requires about 50,000 to
100,000 aerodynamic simulations
Today

Desired Future State

unnel
Wind T

CF
D

Cost,
Flowtime

Data Base
Building

100 1,000 10,000 100,000 10

Number of Simulations
Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.
10

CFD Design, Most

Data Base Building
Wind Tunnel
Validation
Special
Conditions

100 1,000 10,000 100,000

Number of Simulations

Closing Thoughts
CFD exists to enable new solutions to problems, reduce airplane
development cost, and reduce time to market
CFD can allow you to safely explore areas of the flight regime
without putting a pilot at risk
CFD can allow you to analyze conditions for which physical
simulation is either very expensive or not possible, such as
hypersonic propulsion systems and full flight Reynolds number
testing
Accuracy, robustness and timeliness are the keys to acceptance
and use in an industrial environment
Impediments: applications that do not scale well (to 1000s of
processors with sufficient memory) this is science; resources to
run 1000s of flight conditions on 100s of processors this is the
business of engineering
Copyright 2009 Boeing. All rights reserved.