Uncertainty Quantification In Computational Fluid Dynamics

This book introduces design techniques developed to increase the safety of aircraft engines, and demonstrates how the application of stochastic methods can overcome problems in the accurate prediction of engine lift caused by manufacturing error. This in turn addresses the issue of achieving required safety margins when hampered by limits in current design and manufacturing methods. The authors show that avoiding the potential catastrophe generated by the failure of an aircraft engine relies on the prediction of the correct behaviour of microscopic imperfections. This book shows how to quantify the possibility of such failure, and that it is possible to design components that are inherently less risky and more reliable. This new, updated and significantly expanded edition gives an introduction to engine reliability and safety to contextualise this important issue, evaluates newly-proposed methods for uncertainty quantification as applied to jet engines. Uncertainty Quantification in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Aircraft Engines will be of use to gas turbine manufacturers and designers as well as CFD practitioners, specialists and researchers. Graduate and final year undergraduate students in aerospace or mathematical engineering may also find it of interest.

Fluid flows are characterized by uncertain inputs such as random initial data, material and flux coefficients, and boundary conditions. The current volume addresses the pertinent issue of efficiently computing the flow uncertainty, given this initial randomness. It collects seven original review articles that cover improved versions of the Monte Carlo method (the so-called multi-level Monte Carlo method (MLMC)), moment-based stochastic Galerkin methods and modified versions of the stochastic collocation methods that use adaptive stencil selection of the ENO-WENO type in both physical and stochastic space. The methods are also complemented by concrete applications such as flows around aerofoils and rockets, problems of aeroelasticity (fluid-structure interactions), and shallow water flows for propagating water waves. The wealth of numerical examples provide evidence on the suitability of each proposed method as well as comparisons of different approaches.

This book deals with the application of spectral methods to problems of uncertainty propagation and quanti?cation in model-based computations. It speci?cally focuses on computational and algorithmic features of these methods which are most useful in dealing with models based on partial differential equations, with special att- tion to models arising in simulations of ?uid ?ows. Implementations are illustrated through applications to elementary problems, as well as more elaborate examples selected from the authors’ interests in incompressible vortex-dominated ?ows and compressible ?ows at low Mach numbers. Spectral stochastic methods are probabilistic in nature, and are consequently rooted in the rich mathematical foundation associated with probability and measure spaces. Despite the authors’ fascination with this foundation, the discussion only - ludes to those theoretical aspects needed to set the stage for subsequent applications. The book is authored by practitioners, and is primarily intended for researchers or graduate students in computational mathematics, physics, or ?uid dynamics. The book assumes familiarity with elementary methods for the numerical solution of time-dependent, partial differential equations; prior experience with spectral me- ods is naturally helpful though not essential. Full appreciation of elaborate examples in computational ?uid dynamics (CFD) would require familiarity with key, and in some cases delicate, features of the associated numerical methods. Besides these shortcomings, our aim is to treat algorithmic and computational aspects of spectral stochastic methods with details suf?cient to address and reconstruct all but those highly elaborate examples.

This book introduces novel design techniques developed to increase the safety of aircraft engines. The authors demonstrate how the application of uncertainty methods can overcome problems in the accurate prediction of engine lift, caused by manufacturing error. This in turn ameliorates the difficulty of achieving required safety margins imposed by limits in current design and manufacturing methods. This text shows that even state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are not able to predict the same performance measured in experiments; CFD methods assume idealised geometries but ideal geometries do not exist, cannot be manufactured and their performance differs from real-world ones. By applying geometrical variations of a few microns, the agreement with experiments improves dramatically, but unfortunately the manufacturing errors in engines or in experiments are unknown. In order to overcome this limitation, uncertainty quantification considers the probability density functions of manufacturing errors. It is then possible to predict the overall variation of the jet engine performance using stochastic techniques. Uncertainty Quantification in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Aircraft Engines demonstrates that some geometries are not affected by manufacturing errors, meaning that it is possible to design safer engines. Instead of trying to improve the manufacturing accuracy, uncertainty quantification when applied to CFD is able to indicate an improved design direction. This book will be of interest to gas turbine manufacturers and designers as well as CFD practitioners, specialists and researchers. Graduate and final year undergraduate students may also find it of use.

During the last decade, research in Uncertainty Quantification (UC) has received a tremendous boost, in fluid engineering and coupled structural-fluids systems. New algorithms and adaptive variants have also emerged. This timely compendium overviews in detail the current state of the art of the field, including advances in structural engineering, along with the recent focus on fluids and coupled systems. Such a strong compilation of these vibrant research areas will certainly be an inspirational reference material for the scientific community.

This monograph presents computational techniques and numerical analysis to study conservation laws under uncertainty using the stochastic Galerkin formulation. With the continual growth of computer power, these methods are becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to more classical sampling-based techniques. The text takes advantage of stochastic Galerkin projections applied to the original conservation laws to produce a large system of modified partial differential equations, the solutions to which directly provide a full statistical characterization of the effect of uncertainties. Polynomial Chaos Methods of Hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations focuses on the analysis of stochastic Galerkin systems obtained for linear and non-linear convection-diffusion equations and for a systems of conservation laws; a detailed well-posedness and accuracy analysis is presented to enable the design of robust and stable numerical methods. The exposition is restricted to one spatial dimension and one uncertain parameter as its extension is conceptually straightforward. The numerical methods designed guarantee that the solutions to the uncertainty quantification systems will converge as the mesh size goes to zero. Examples from computational fluid dynamics are presented together with numerical methods suitable for the problem at hand: stable high-order finite-difference methods based on summation-by-parts operators for smooth problems, and robust shock-capturing methods for highly nonlinear problems. Academics and graduate students interested in computational fluid dynamics and uncertainty quantification will find this book of interest. Readers are expected to be familiar with the fundamentals of numerical analysis. Some background in stochastic methods is useful but notnecessary.