FlightStream® is a surface vorticity flow solver designed to allow users to develop optimized designs for compressible and incompressible subsonic vehicles as well as transonic vehicles. Equipped with the state-of-the-art unstructured surface-mesh compressible-flow vorticity solver, FlightStream® eliminates the costly process of volume mesh generation and mesh-dependency on flow-field solutions and stability. FlightStream® provides the ability to design airplanes within an optimization pipeline in a fraction of the time taken by conventional CFD solvers. FlightStream® integrates with CAD, allowing users to import their geometries designed in any commercial CAD/CAE software (such as SolidWorks, AutoCAD, NX, CATIA etc.). The FlightStream® vorticity solver works from very small mesh sizes compared to traditional CFD solvers and serves to reduce user input in generating high fidelity surface meshes. FlightStream® is one of the most versatile and powerful aerodynamic analysis tools for aerospace, marine and alternative energy applications today.
AFWERX has awarded Research in Flight proposal, "A Rapid Aerodynamic Prediction Tool for Maneuvering Hypersonic Air Vehicles", with a Phase I contract.
Research in Flight is partnered with Utah State University on developing this new hypersonic flow enhancement for its FlightStream® flow solver. This joint proposal is geared towards attaining the desired capability of physics-based methods that are higher fidelity models relative to empirical methods, yet computationally efficient and suitable to the conceptual design phase. The new hypersonic solver is expected to be used by USAF and DoD customers, as well as industry OEM in the emerging hypersonic flight vehicles industry as well as commercial space-launch companies.
The Utah State University partners are being led by Dr. Douglas Hunsaker and his graduate students. The FlightStream® principal investigators include Dr. Vivek Ahuja and Dr. Roy Hartfield. The Phase I activity is expected to finish in February 2023 which will result in the initial prototype solver being developed. In the follow-on Phase II, this capability will be commercialized in the FlightStream® flow solver for industry and academic customers.
