FieldView Helps Launch a SmartFish
Pursuing a new concept in airframe design, a small team of engineers decided to start with a blank slate and use the latest computer-aided engineering tools to optimize aircraft geometry from a purely aerodynamic point of view.
With the goal to significantly reduce drag, Koni Schafroth and his Team SmartFish decided to eliminate the aerodynamic interference where wings meet the fuselage. He developed a 3D shape that incorporates wings and fuselage in a smoothly flowing form that, to his surprise, resembled a fish. Fishes' fins are attached on their trunk at a position just forward of the maximum thickness of their body, the point where pressure equilibration occurs. The resulting increase in the aspect ratio reduces the induced drag coefficient.
Streamlines emitted from automatically detected vortex cores, shown in purple, help highlight the vortex position.
"The FieldView post-processor gives us a huge advantage by enabling us to get more information in less time from each simulation. FieldView is very simple to work with and easy to learn which is important because so much of the designer's time is spent with this tool visualizing the simulation results. In addition, since I wear many hats, I don't work with CFD every day. FieldView's user interface is intuitive enough that I can go without using the tool for several weeks and then come back and pick up right where I left off using restart files with new or existing data."
- Koni Schafroth, CEO, Team SmartFish
Read the case study (PDF 248K) for more information and images.
