Design Environment for Multi-Fidelity and Multi-Disciplinary Components

Many of the most challenging categories of propulsion system development are related to the prediction of interacting effects between the fluid loads, thermal loads, and the structural deflection. In practice, the interactions between technical disciplines are often not fully explored analytically, and the analysis in one discipline often uses a simplified representation of other disciplines as an input or boundary condition. For example, the fluid forces in an engine generate static and dynamic rotor deflection, but the forces themselves are dependent on the rotor position and its orbit. A typical design practice might involve predicting the fluid and thermal loads for various conditions and passing those estimates along for inclusion with the structural model. This practice ignores the interaction between the physical phenomena where the outcome of each analysis can be heavily dependent on the inputs (i.e., changes in flow due to deflection, changes in deflection due to fluid forces). Such a rigid design process also lacks the flexibility to employ multiple levels of fidelity in the analysis of each of the components. In this project, Mechanical Solutions, Inc. (MSI) proposes to extend two existing software tools to develop a design environment with both breadth (to cover multiple disciplines) and depth (to cover multiple levels of fidelity).

The accomplishment of all Phase I objectives will demonstrate the significant benefits of the combined multi-fidelity / multi-disciplinary design environment. This capability would be immediately useful for the design and development of civilian and military gas turbine engines. Such an analytical capability will also assist the wider turbomachinery community with avoidance of advanced designs, leading to a successful commercialization of the new tool.

By providing an integrated framework for turbomachinery analysis, the work in this project will reduce the time and complexity of the multiphysics analyses (job setup, solution control, pre- and post-processing). This work directly addresses NASA design environment goals as engineering teams will have the capability to employ multi-fidelity physics-based tools to reduce the failure rate and development cost of propulsion systems. In this proposed work, the extension of CoMAT to work with NPSS will enhance the capabilities of both tools, and will facilitate a broader range of multi-fidelity, multi-disciplinary analyses and simulations of complete vehicle systems. The numeric zoom functions in NPSS will be enhanced with the fluid-structure interaction capability of CoMAT. Similarly, the high-fidelity analysis in CoMAT will be leveraged by the high level functions in NPSS. Since both tools are built to work with proprietary and 3rd party solvers, MSI is confident of the commercialization potential of this work.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.