Gustavo E. C. Fujiwara

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of Flexible Aircraft with Morphing Wings

Morphing wings are bio-inspired mechanisms analogous to what birds do in flight to adjust their wing shape to enhance flight performance. Similar principles are being investigated for use in aircraft in order to recover close-to-optimal performance amidst changing flight conditions. In addition to its aerodynamic benefits, this technology can further improve aircraft performance by providing active aeroelastic wing shaping control during flight to reduce wing design loads, prevent adverse aeroelastic effects that can occur for highly-flexible aircraft, and improve passenger ride comfort.

Lower-Order Methods for Aircraft Conceptual Design

Aircraft design and optimization require a large number of configuration evaluations at a reasonable level of accuracy. High-fidelity tools provide good accuracy, but are often times not available during initial design phases due to the associated complexity and high computational cost. Nevertheless, important multidisciplinary tradeoffs need to be addressed from initial product development in order to mitigate risks and prevent later project modifications. Lower-order methods can provide attractive alternatives at much lower cost and time if they can capture the appropriate level of physics relevant to early design stages. Some of the methods researched include enhancing aerodynamic models based on potential flow formulations with viscous and transonic corrections and coupling the effects of structural dynamics with computationally efficient finite element models.

Aircraft Aerodynamics and Icing

The formation of ice over the aircraft during flight negatively affects the aerodynamic performance of aircraft during flight and can lead to impacts on its flying qualities and behavior, posing hazards to its safe operation. Research on ice formation and its impact on aerodynamics for swept wings are highly complex phenomena important to the design and certification of commercial aircraft. This research is focused on understanding the ice formation mechanisms on swept wings, the aerodynamic impact of ice accretion, the limitations of current computational tools for icing prediction, and the sensitivity of ice shape fidelity on aerodynamic impact.

Wind Turbine Damage Assessment using Multiphase Flow Analysis

Wind turbines used for electrical power generation are subject to fouling and damage by airborne particles where the wind turbine operates. Throughout the 20-year lifespan of a wind turbine, particles such as rain, sand, ice crystals, hail, and insects are major contributors to a deterioration in turbine performances and blades accumulate dirt especially in the surroundings of the leading edge. Particle collision, temperature jumps and freeze-thaw cycles may cause smaller coating cracks to propagate, promoting coating removal and eventually delamination and corrosion damage due to exposure of the internal composite structure. The originally smooth surface of the blades may change considerably, and the increased roughness will cause a drop of gross annual energy production and an increase in cost of energy. This research investigates damage assessments of turbine blades.

Human-Powered Aircraft Design and Optimization

A particular field of aerospace engineering is dedicated to the study of aircraft that are so energetically efficient, that the power produced by a human being enables it to takeoff and maintain sustained flight without any external or stored energy. These aircraft are known as Human-Powered Aircraft (HPA). This research was inspired by the admirable work of Dr. McCready and Dr. Langford / Dr. Drela in the 1980s that made human-powered flight possible and broke several records with high-performance HPA. The objective of this work was to design a single-seat HPA applying multidisciplinary optimization techniques to minimize power required and stall speed, representing respectively, an easy and safe-to-fly HPA.

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