23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-1.9.4

SENSITIVITY AND UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS OF AERODYNAMIC FLOWS

D. Pelletier, E. Turgeon, J. Borggaard
Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada

Keywords: sensitivity analysis, uncertainty analysis, aerodynamic flows

This paper presents a methodology for cascading uncertainties in input parameters through a CFD model to obtain uncertainty estimates of output flow variables or output functionals such as lift, drag and moment coefficients for airfoils. The sensitivity equation method is used to derive flow sensitivity equations which are then solved by an adaptive finite element method. Sensitivity infor-mation is then used to perform uncertainty anal-ysis for turbulent flows over a backward facing step and over a NACA 0012 airfoil.

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