A high-fidelity and fast VLM-2.5D RANS coupled solver for conceptual wing design and optimization

Date

2026-1

Author

Şahin, Bilge

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The early design stage of an aircraft often requires exploring a wide design space. It makes wing analysis both time-consuming and computationally demanding. Therefore, industry commonly relies on low-fidelity aerodynamic tools; however, their limited accuracy may lead to suboptimal design decisions, resulting in significant time and cost penalties. This study introduces a nonlinear formulation of the Vortex Lattice Method (VLM) as an aerodynamic analysis approach that is both computationally efficient and of high-fidelity. Viscous effects are incorporated into the VLM through the use of sectional viscous airfoil data evaluated at selected spanwise locations. The viscous airfoil data are obtained via Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the infinite swept wing assumption to capture cross-flow effects known as the 2.5D method. Both validation and verification studies indicate that the developed VLM–2.5D RANS solver reproduces experimentally observed trends and closely matches predictions obtained from high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses for various wing configurations. Since it reduces the analysis time from several hours required by full three-dimensional CFD simulations to only a few seconds, the method combines computational efficiency with improved accuracy compared to classical inviscid approaches. This makes it particularly suitable for use in conceptual wing design and optimization.

Subject Keywords

Conceptual wing design, Vortex lattice method, 2.5D RANS, Nonlinear aerodynamics, Viscous-inviscid coupling

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118429

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis