Deep Learning for Multi-Fidelity Aerodynamic Distribution Modeling from Experimental and Simulation Data

Abstract: The wind-tunnel experiment plays a critical role in the design and development phases of modern aircraft, which is limited by prohibitive cost. In contrast, numerical simulation, as an important alternative paradigm, mimics complex flow behaviors but is less accurate compared to experiment. This leads to the recent development and emerging interest in applying data fusion for aerodynamic prediction. In particular, the accurate prediction of aerodynamic with lower computational cost can be achieved by fusing experimental (high-fidelity) and computational (low-fidelity) aerodynamic data. Currently, existing works on aerodynamic model using data fusion mainly concern integral data (lift, drag, etc.). In this paper, a multi-fidelity aerodynamic model based on Deep Neural Network (DNN), where both numerical and experimental data are introduced in the loss function with proper weighting factor to balance the overall accuracy, is developed for aerodynamic distribution over the wing surface. Specially, the proposed approach is illustrated by modeling the surface pressure distribution of ONERA M6 wing in transonic flow, including different secnarios where the flow condition varies or there is less high-fidelity data. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach with decent number of low-fidelity data and a few high-fidelity data can accurately predict the surface pressure distribution on transonic wing. The outperformance of the proposed model over other DNNs from only high fidelity or low-fidelity, has been reported.