Knowledge Based Engineering framework for preliminary spaceplane design
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Abstract
The concept of a spaceplane, a launch system that is a combination of an airplane and a rocket, is one of the most promising concepts of sustainable access to space. Along its trajectory, it experiences most extreme conditions with frequently opposing design requirements, making it one of the most complicated challenges in aerospace engineering. This project aims at assisting in its design process by creating a KBE framework that combines a 3D geometry generation module, with automatic discretization and low-fidelity analysis using a panel method, ZONAIR. The results of the low-fidelity simulations are then correlated with CFD calculations using a multi-fidelity data fusion technique called co-kriging, to provide a good balance between high accuracy and low computational cost, making the framework applicable in the preliminary design phase. During the study of the accuracy of the proposed algorithm it was found that just 30 high-fidelity points is enough to generate surrogate models of aerodynamic coefficients with expected relative error below 5%.