GPU-accelerated simulations for eVTOL aerodynamic analysis

The demand for fast, high-fidelity, scale-resolving computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations is continuously growing. Especially new emerging aviation technologies, such as electrical vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL), strongly rely on advanced numerical methods to retain development life-cycle costs and achieving design targets more quickly. This paper presents a cutting-edge large-eddy simulations (LES) solver developed to enable over-night turnaround times for full aircraft simulations on advanced graphics processing unit (GPU) architectures. The solver models weakly compressible fluid flows over complex three-dimensional bodies based on an immersed boundary method with geometry-based and flow-based automatic mesh adaption. Its high accuracy and unprecedented performance is demonstrated for high Reynolds number aerodynamic benchmark cases and compared to recent results from literature. In addition, the successful validation against experimental data for the Lilium Jet canard is discussed.