Real-Time Aerodynamic Performance Evaluation through romBox and VOLTA

In this work, we provide a framework for the aerodynamic shape design of industrial components, through the definition of a multi-fidelity Reduced-Order Model (ROM) based on Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD).

The rationale behind ROMs is to describe the most relevant features of a flow field by using a much smaller set of degrees of freedom with respect to the standard full-order model used in the numerical simulation. This permits to enable the quasi real-time evaluation of complex physical phenomena, exploiting the information provided by a carefully selected space of solution snapshots. In this particular application, in order to train our POD model in the so-called offline phase, for a given parameterization we build a database of a few high-fidelity simulations mixed with a set of mid-fidelity evaluations, obtained by mesh coarsening: then, during the online phase, we use POD with interpolation to approximate the flow field solution for new parameter values. Such evaluation is much faster than the offline counterparts, and permits to retrieve relevant information about a new configuration almost instantaneously.

The drawback of this approach, implemented within romBox, lies with the complexity of the workflow, that usually require a lot of expertise and it is difficult to integrate in an automated design loop. Exploiting the capabilities of modeFRONTIER and VOLTA allows us to reduce this overhead, enabling the real-time evaluation of the quantities of interest even for non-expert users. We highlight the effectiveness of the resulting design workflow on a large-scale aerodynamic problem, representative of a real-life automotive application.