Aerodynamics Design

Dear Colleagues,

Aerodynamics is the discipline that studies the characteristics of fluids flowing around bodies, the resulting forces on these bodies, and the physical phenomena explaining them. Aerodynamics design can thus be defined as the engineering field, and ultimately the art, that leverages aerodynamics and uses them to actually “tailor” flows to produce desirable effects, usually modifying the forces acting on bodies for some specific conditions or ranges of specific conditions. It is therefore intrinsically related to the understanding of flow behavior that is a prerequisite to any successful design. The aerodynamics designer should develop an intimate, almost carnal relationship with flows and be able to “feel” the pressure forces and shear stresses at play in the flow. He can then imagine “what to do”, where to act, and what sort of geometry modifications to apply on the bodies to improve the situation, e.g., alleviate detrimental flow phenomena such as separation, achieve extremal values of some component of aerodynamic forces or moments, or conversely reduce them.

Such an ability to understand the flow and guess how to tailor it is grounded on a strong physical sense and must be educated through personal experiences from flight tests, wind tunnel experiments or from the analysis of numerous numerical flow simulations, or best of all from a combination of these.

This Special Issue is intended to share knowledge, experiences, and methods related to all aspects of aerodynamics design in terms of flow physics, methods, and applications:

• from low-speed incompressible flows to supersonic/hypersonic flows through transonic aerodynamics;
• from the experimental investigation of innovative concepts and devices to numerical simulations-based design;
• from the automotive industry and terrestrial vehicles’ aerodynamics to aircraft, rotorcraft, spacecraft, and missiles’ aerodynamics through aerodynamics design of turbomachinery and “new entrants” (VTOL, supersonic aircraft, etc.);
• from applied and practical design studies to innovative method and tool development and validation (geometry parameterization, automated grid generation and deformation, and numerical optimization techniques and approaches to design).

Dr. Gérald Carrier
Dr. Michael Meheut
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Aerospace is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• airfoil, blade, clean wing design
• high-lift devices and control surfaces aerodynamics design
• aircraft aerodynamics design, aircraft components design (HTP, VTP, belly fairing, winglets, engine pylons, etc.)
• natural and hybrid laminar flow design
• car, trucks and train aerodynamics design
• internal flows application design and flow control devices
• turbomachinery and propulsive system aerodynamics (turbofans, open rotors, propellers)
• engine integration design, distributed propulsion, boundary layer ingestion, etc.)
• rotorcraft, convertible and VTOL/evtol aerodynamics design
• supersonic and hypersonic vehicles aerodynamics design
• new aircraft and spacecraft and concepts aerodynamics
• aerodynamics design applications including unsteady flow phenomena (flutter, buffet, inlet buzz, etc.)
• advanced aerodynamics designs investigation and validation by experiments
• geometry modeling and aerodynamic shape parameterization for design
• topology optimization methods for aerodynamics design
• automated grid generation, deformation, and adaptation
• innovative aerodynamics design optimization (direct, surrogate-based, and gradient-based optimization methods, machine learning and IA methods for flow optimization, adjoint methods, and multi-criteria optimization)
• uncertainty analysis and robust design for aerodynamics design