Computer Aided Engineering for Aero-Optics

PSR proposes to develop a software package for Computer-Aided-Engineering (CAE) of laser installation aboard aircraft. For a selected aircraft installation site, this package will provide a prediction of laser performance as a function of flight conditions, pointing angle, system dynamics and atmospherics. It is proposed to limit the aero-optic effects to the aircraft-generated turbulence in the region occupied by the engine exhaust gases and the wake vortices. The algorithms and software will be designed to operate conveniently and with reasonable run-time on a high-end PC (486/66 DX Intel chip or Pentium chip) or workstations such as SUN's SPARC 10 series. To this end, the algorithm employed for both laser propagation and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) will be heuristically tailored to the significant regimes identified during the current USAF program on Turbulence Interactions (TI). In addition, the propagation and turbulence data collected during the TI program will be provided as an accessible database for future use. This CAE package would be designed for system engineering applications of interest to the Air Force. Phase I: Design and develop a detailed preliminary design specification for the Aero-optics CAE.