Free-form deformation, mesh morphing and reduced-order methods: enablers for efficient aerodynamic shape optimisation

The work provides an integrated pipeline for the model order reduction of turbulent flows around parametrised geometries in aerodynamics. In particular, Free-Form Deformation is applied for geometry parametrisation, whereas two different reduced-order models based on Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) are employed in order to speed-up the full-order simulations: the first method exploits POD with interpolation, while the second one is based on domain decomposition. For the sampling of the parameter space, we adopt a Greedy strategy coupled with Constrained Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations, in order to guarantee a good compromise between space exploration and exploitation. The proposed framework is tested on an industrially relevant application, i.e. the front-bumper morphing of the DrivAer car model, using the finite-volume method for the full-order resolution of the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations.