Welcome to the website of the ‘Multidisciplinary Design and Simulation Methods’ group.
Design and simulation methods are closely interlinked in order to check and refine design decisions. While design methods define the structure, function and boundary conditions of a system, simulation tests these designs under realistic loads, interfaces and environmental conditions. This means that results from the simulation flow directly back into the design phase: weak points become visible, parameters can be optimised and alternative concepts can be quickly evaluated. This reduces risks, shortens development cycles and cuts costs, while increasing product quality and innovative strength.
The close interlinking creates a powerful, interdisciplinary working environment that promotes creativity and efficiency in equal measure.
Multidisciplinary simulation combines different physical and technical disciplines in an integrated modelling and simulation approach. Instead of looking at individual aspects such as structural mechanics, flow simulation or control engineering in isolation, their interactions are modelled simultaneously. This results in more realistic predictions of the behaviour of complex systems with strong interactions. A significant advantage lies in the understanding of these interactions and the early identification of critical effects and design conflicts: by simultaneously considering thermal or mechanical interactions, for example, weak points and optimisation potential can already be uncovered in the concept phase. This minimises expensive reworking and prototype cycles and accelerates the entire development process. In addition, this approach allows a well-founded risk assessment and resource allocation.
Technologically, multidisciplinary simulations are realised using modern software platforms that support parameterisation, automation and data management across disciplines. This allows models to be adapted interactively, different scenarios to be calculated in parallel and results to be exchanged seamlessly.
Overall, multidisciplinary simulation makes a significant contribution to companies' ability to innovate. It promotes a holistic approach that combines technical excellence, economic efficiency and ecological sustainability. Those who adopt this integrative approach today will secure a decisive advantage in the product development of tomorrow.
The IFL has been active in the field of multidisciplinary design and simulation methods for more than 30 years, both methodically and application-orientated with problems from the aerospace industry. The focus is often on flow-structure interactions of systems with mechanical and thermal couplings. Modelling of different fidelities is used, whereby the focus is on the coupling of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods with computational structural mechanics (CSM) methods. Established codes for the flow, e.g. OpenFOAM or DLR Tau-Code, and for the structure, e.g. Abaqus, Ansys, Nastran, are used to solve the equations in the sub-areas. In the course of many projects, extensive expertise on the algorithmic and software coupling of partitioned simulation approaches has been built up and the software platform ifls (integration framework and linking system) has been developed, which makes it possible to implement coupled simulations elegantly and numerically accurately using partitioned approaches.
This has made it possible to investigate many research issues, ranging from the aeroelasticity of elastic wings of birds to those of commercial aircraft or the thermal-mechanical coupling of re-entry bodies. Current research work is concerned, for example, with the optimisation of structural concepts for load reduction on commercial aircraft, including control aspects, or with the design of innovative cooling channel structures for thermally and mechanically stressed structures for surface cooling or highly stressed rocket combustion chambers. The development of methods for the efficient optimisation of such structural concepts is currently a methodological challenge. In addition to numerical optimisation methods, e.g. Bayesian optimisation based on genetic algorithms, efficient methods for topology optimisation for innovative designs, e.g. based on isogeometric analysis (IGA) and methods for rapid structural analysis, e.g. for crash evaluation using substitute models derived from high-fidelity models, are the subject of current research work.
HYFLIP | Hybride Methoden zur sicheren Auslegung klimaneutraler Flugzeuge für Impact-Probleme
ISK | Strukturen für ganzheitliche Struktur-Systemtechnologien für klimaneutrale Konfigurationen
SE²A B2.4 | Hybride Lastminderung durch fluidische und Umkehr-Steuerung sowie durch nichtlineare Strukturen
SE²A B4.1 | Multidisziplinärer Strukturentwurf und Thermomanagement für Elektroflugzeuge
SynTrac B06 | Synergien von hochintegrierten Transportflugzeugen
SE²A B2.4 | Morphing structures for the 1g-wing