AERO Suite
Design for Multi-Physics Applications
AERO Suite comprises a comprehensive structural/thermal analyzer, AERO-S, a powerful compressible viscous flow solver, AERO-F, and a user-friendly Graphical User Interface, AERO-I. It is a unique multi-disciplinary software tool in that its multi-physics capabilities were not introduced into its core architecture as an afterthought. Instead, AERO-F and AERO-S were designed from the start to be coupled for high-performance fluid-structure, fluid-thermal, and fluid-thermal-structure simulations. With AERO Suite, such coupled simulations can be performed using fluid, structural, and thermal models with non-matching interfaces. They can also be efficiently performed on distributed parallel processors in a user-friendly manner.
Design for High Performance Computing
AERO Suite is also unique in that it was not retrofitted with acquired parallel processing technology. Instead, AERO Suite was architected since its inception for massively parallel and other HPC systems. Its main computational modules, AERO-F and AERO-S, were designed around state-of-the art parallel data structures. Because they are also equipped with the latest computational technologies, both software modules deliver the best possible numerical and parallel scalabilities on shared, distributed, and hybrid memory systems. AERO Suite is portable across such HPC systems equipped with MPI for message passing, and/or OpenMP for threading.
Structural/Thermal Analysis using AERO-S
AERO-S is a high-performance finite element structural analyzer with linear and nonlinear static, vibration (eigen), dynamic, and transient capabilities for restrained, partially restrained, and unrestrained homogeneous and composites structures. It can also perform static, dynamic, and transient linear and nonlinear thermal analyses. It features a comprehensive library of lower- and higher-order finite elements for structural and thermal computations, and the FETI family of massively parallel equation solvers for scalable computations on HPC systems. AERO-S interfaces with AERO-F to perform multi-physics analyses.
Aerodynamic/Aeroacoustic Analysis using AERO-F
AERO-F is a three-dimensional, compressible, Euler/Navier-Stokes, finite volume flow solver. It features state-of-the-art RANS, DES, and LES turbulence models. It operates on unstructured body-fitted meshes that can combine tetrahedra, prisms, pyramids, and hexahedra. It can also compute flows past and/or within static and dynamic obstacles whose wet surfaces are immersed in a fixed, non- body-fitted, embedding mesh. The body-fitted meshes and the embedded discrete surfaces can be fixed, moved, and/or deformed in a prescribed manner (forced body motion) or via the interaction with the structural analyzer AERO-S. AERO-F features also a versatile Chimera (overset grid) capability.
AERO-F can perform linearized multi-physics simulations for rapidly predicting the response of a flow to perturbations, and compute the sensitivity of output results to variations of shape and flow parameters. It is also capable of comprehensive aeroacoustic computations using a number of density-based and pressure-based acoustic analogy methods.
Multi-Physics Analysis using AERO Suite
AERO Suite enables a large variety of fluid-structure, fluid-thermal, and fluid-thermal-structure simulations previously thought to be unfeasible. These include, among others, the simulations of flutter and buffeting phenomena, trimming and maneuvering operations, accelerated and decelerated high-speed flows, aeroservoelastic control, and aerothermal as well as aerothermoelastic effects, with an unprecedented level of structural details and with turbulence modeling when required.
Real-Time Solutions using AERO Suite
AERO Suite also offers the possibility of developing real-time solutions to many time-critical engineering problems such as design, design optimization, and control, by generating linearized Reduced-Order Models (ROMs) that can be processed on-line. These ROMs are very small computational models that can nevertheless faithfully reproduce the essential features of their much larger counterparts, at a small fraction of their computational cost.
User-Friendly Simulations using AERO-I
Input setup for complex multi-physics simulations and data flow between multi-disciplinary software modules can rapidly overwhelm the most experienced analyst. However, with the Graphical User Interface AERO-I, input preparation and simulation setup are simplified and automated, and the analyst is shielded from the complexity of a powerful software suite such as AERO Suite. AERO-I organizes simulations into projects and folders, and enables data-reuse between different but related computations. It imports NASTRAN data files, and exports AERO Suite results in the VisIt or FieldView format. It is also equipped with auto-save, data recovery, and undo/redo features.