CFD Engineer - Transonic Aerodynamic Design & Analysis

Company: GENERAL ATOMICS
Location: Santee
Posted on: January 16, 2022

Job Description:

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), an affiliate of General Atomics, is a world leader in proven, reliable remotely piloted aircraft and tactical reconnaissance radars, as well as advanced high-resolution surveillance systems.

We have an exciting opportunity for a Master 's level CFD (computational fluid dynamics) engineer to contribute to the design and analysis of transonic air vehicles. This position is within the Flight Technologies department in San Diego, CA. At low fidelity your CFD analyses might include inviscid tools, as well as inviscid and viscous 2D airfoil tools, and they may be part of a MDAO framework and/or digital thread. At high fidelity you will mainly focus on commercial and government RANS codes, but there are efforts underway to investigate LBM and codes compatible with OpenMDAO. Responsibilities include the execution and documentation of CFD related design and analysis projects, tool development, and the estimation of budgets and schedules.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITES:

• Assist in all stages of the CFD-based aerodynamic design and optimization process within the Flight Technologies Department.
• Generation of computational meshes and performing CFD analyses using standard commercial and/or governmental mesh generators and CFD codes. The latter includes monitoring convergence of both steady state and transient simulations.
• Generate reports, specifications, memos, and sketches of the obtained CFD results and present them verbally in meetings and phone conferences to all level employees and customers.
• Development of CFD tools for process compression to enable CFD to be used in the design stages by non-CFD experts. This includes writing journal files and scripts for batch processing of geometry creation, meshing, analyses and post-processing.
• Implement physics models into the CFD tools to expand their capabilities.
• Compare CFD results to wind tunnel and flight test data, in order to validate and calibrate the analyses performed.
• Assist employees in and outside Flight Technologies with usage of generated results.
• Contribute to the improvement of transonic analysis methods, such as via solution-based, automatic mesh refinement (AMR) and/or adjoint-based refinement and optimization.
• Contribute to the improvement of transition prediction, especially at higher speeds.
• Contribute to the integration of CFD into the digital thread, which is likely to involve integration with OpenMDAO.
  We recognize and appreciate the value and contributions of individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences and welcome all qualified individuals to apply.
  Job Qualifications:
  Typically requires a bachelor's or masters' degree in engineering or a related technical discipline from an accredited institution and two or more years of engineering experience with a bachelor's degree. May substitute equivalent engineering experience in lieu of education.Strongly prefer a Master's or PhD in aerospace or mechanical engineering with specialization in CFD, ideally.Requires strong technical knowledge of external flows, including transonic flows, transition, and separation prediction.Requires strong technical knowledge and experience in aircraft design and optimization, including wing design. Requires strong technical knowledge and experience in MDAO. Requires familiarity and experience using adjoint-based solvers.Must have a sincere interest in airplanes.Requires solid knowledge of fluid- and thermodynamics, and CFD.Requires in-depth knowledge of when to use RANS, uRANS, DDES, WM-LES, etc.Knowledge of transition modeling, such as Menter 's Re-theta-gamma, but ideally also stability codes (LASTRAC etc.).Requires mastery in at least one widely used CFD solver (preferably FLUENT or CCM+).Requires mastery of 2D codes, specifically XFoil and MSES.Requires mastery of at least one meshing tool, preferably ANSA.Familiarity with creating aerodynamic databases, ideally including UQ and ROMs such as RSM. Working knowledge of utility of CFD data and wind tunnel data, including error estimation and ideally UQ.Requires basic knowledge of a CAD system (preferably NX).Requires solid programming knowledge (C, C++, Fortran, preferably Matlab).Experience with Government codes such as Kestrel, Fun3D, OverFlow is desirable.Familiarity with advanced solvers, such as Lattice-Boltzmann (LBM), Discontinuous Galerkin, and/or higher-order methods is desirable.Familiarity with active flow control (AFC) is desirable.Familiarity with high-lift prediction is desirable.Occasional travel to wind tunnels, customer sites, and conferences.Must have an understanding of engineering concepts, principles, and theory and experience demonstrating the application of those concepts.Must possess the ability to understand new concepts quickly and apply them accurately throughout an evolving environment.Must have strong communication, computer, documentation, presentation, and interpersonal skills.Must be able to work both independently and on a team.

Keywords: GENERAL ATOMICS, Santee , CFD Engineer - Transonic Aerodynamic Design & Analysis, Engineering , Santee, California