RapidCFD: A flexible rapid computational fluid dynamics platform

The Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) is tasked with maintaining air superiority for the warfighter through research and development of aerodynamic technologies. This research includes configuration aerodynamics, flow control device development, wind tunnel testing, and high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD). However, current methods of CFD analysis are user time intensive and require extensive computational resources over hours or even days to complete a simulation. We propose RapidCFD, a customized end-to-end solution for problem definition, rapid, reduced-order CFD simulation, and results analysis and visualization. Our proposed reduced-order CFD solution will reduce computation time by three to four orders of magnitude and our end-to-end solution will allow problem definition to occur in minutes and enable real-time visualization of simulation results. Our team is comprised of experienced researchers at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and Kitware, Inc that have a strong background working together and working on quality Department of Defense projects. Kitware also has a long history of successful commercialization of these efforts. Our novel combination of reduced-order CFD algorithms with ParaView, our open source data analysis and visualization tools, will create an innovative custom end-to-end workflow to meet the needs of AFRL.