NASA SBIR 2009 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Combustion Research and Flow Technology
6210 Keller's Church Road
Pipersville, PA 18947 - 2010
(215) 766-1520

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Peter A. Cavallo
cavallo@craft-tech.com
6210 Keller's Church Rd.
Pipersville, PA 18947 - 1020
(215) 766-1520 Extension :18

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 3
End: 4

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
Solution errors are inherent in any Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation. Systematic identification, reduction, and control of these various error sources is crucial if the results of CFD simulations are to be trusted for design and performance assessment of air vehicles. While grid refinement studies may verify the spatial accuracy of a solution, these studies are generally laborious and time intensive. Continued development of a standalone Error Transport Equation (ETE) solver is proposed. The proposed program exploits an existing mesh adaptation and error quantification package, CRISP CFD^REG, which currently interfaces with meshes and solutions from the NASA unstructured Navier-Stokes solvers FUN3D and USM3D. The Phase I effort will explore the use of ETE methodology with these production Navier-Stokes solvers as well as the popular structured grid code OVERFLOW. Improvements in error prediction for aerodynamic coefficients will be sought. In addition, the proposed program will address uncertainty quantification for turbulence models commonly used in computational aerodynamics applications. The ETE solver provides a promising, viable path for reliable error quantification and solution verification. This tool will provide numerical error bars, quantifiable levels of uncertainty in both local and globally integrated variables, for use in computational aerodynamics and other applications.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The proposed research is directly relevant to the application of CFD analysis to air vehicles of current and future interest to NASA. CFD simulations are playing an increasing role in air vehicle analysis and design assessment, and numerical predictions often supplement the databases obtained in ground and flight tests. The proposed research will impact the use of CFD analysis tools by NASA personnel in verifying the accuracy of force and moment predictions, surface pressures, heat flux distributions, etc., providing numerical error bars and certifiable confidence levels. As the research effort addresses fundamental issues in numerical simulation accuracy, numerous applications of interest to NASA exist. Potential applications of the proposed error quantification research include simulation of launch vehicles, planetary re-entry capsules, attitude control jets, liquid fuel feed systems, etc.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
NASA-developed CFD codes are heavily used by a number of private companies and organizations within the aerospace and defense industries. Engineers at these corporations and government laboratories rely on the accuracy of NASA CFD tools in the development of small business jets, commercial airliners, and next generation fighter aircraft. Error quantification is a necessity widely recognized by this community. To date, research in error quantification has largely been limited to academic research groups and government laboratories, and no commercially available package for error quantification and reduction currently exists. This offers a unique opportunity to assume the leading role as the first player in the market for such software. Outside of the aerospace and defense sectors, the proposed error quantification research finds ready application in the areas of biofluid flows, automobile engines, power generation and turbomachinery, chemical processing, etc.

NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING

Simulation Modeling Environment Software Tools for Distributed Analysis and Simulation