Kavramsal kanat tasarımı ve optimizasyonu için hızlı ve yüksek doğruluklu VLM–2.5D RANS birleşik çözücüsü

The early design stage of an aircraft often requires exploring a wide design space. It makes wing analysis both time-consuming and computationally demanding. Therefore, industry commonly relies on low-fidelity aerodynamic tools; however, their limited accuracy may lead to suboptimal design decisions, resulting in significant time and cost penalties. This study introduces a nonlinear formulation of the Vortex Lattice Method (VLM) as an aerodynamic analysis approach that is both computationally efficient and of high-fidelity. Viscous effects are incorporated into the VLM through the use of sectional viscous airfoil data evaluated at selected spanwise locations. The viscous airfoil data are obtained via Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the infinite swept wing assumption to capture cross-flow effects known as the 2.5D method. Both validation and verification studies indicate that the developed VLM–2.5D RANS solver reproduces experimentally observed trends and closely matches predictions obtained from high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses for various wing configurations. Since it reduces the analysis time from several hours required by full three-dimensional CFD simulations to only a few seconds, the method combines computational efficiency with improved accuracy compared to classical inviscid approaches. This makes it particularly suitable for use in conceptual wing design and optimization.