Efficient Combat Aircraft Simulations with the TAU RANS Code

Summary

Advanced aircraft design is driven by accurate analysis tools which are combined to an optimization process. Modern aerodynamic analysis for complex aircraft configurations are mostly dependent on flowfield simulation results with small uncertainty levels. A software package which more and more fulfills those requirements is the TAU Code developed at the DLR over many years. The aim of this contribution is to demonstrate the ability of the TAU code to compute physically complex flow problems which occur in flow field simulation tasks for combat aircraft at high angle of attack. It is shown that the improvements developed during the Megadesign project have led to efficiency gains beyond a factor of 2 with respect to run time. This progress has contributed to two main milestones of the project and fulfilled the requirements posed.