Warren H. Davis, Ph.D., Aero CFD Principal Engineer for Northrop Grumman, leads a team responding to continual updates, additions, and enhancements to
the U.S. Navy electronics surveillance workhorse, the E-2C Hawkeye. The Hawkeye provided stellar success in Afghanistan missions earlier this year.
Dr. Davis is one of the people who answers the “will it fly right” question when confronted with next generation modifications. He helps assure that any modifications to aero/propulsion capabilities, airframe additions including antennas, and other changes maintain and enhance performance.
Dr. Davis and his team gauge adaptations on the computer, using two remarkable programs (among other tools): Gridgen and Overflow.
Gridgen is Pointwise Inc.’s grid generation and pre-processing CFD enabling bridge connecting computer aided design (CAD) software and CFD solvers such as Overflow, Fluent, STAR-CD, and CFX. The program generates hexahedral, tetrahedral, and hybrid (prisms and pyramids) meshes, reads geometry from CAD systems, and includes meshing tools and direct solver interfaces. Overflow is a Navier-Stokes flow solver that uses single block grids or Chimera overset (structured) grid systems. Chimera overset grids are body-fitted hexahedral grids around each component. They can overlap each other instead of requiring exact point-to-point interface matching like traditional structured grids. This makes the engineer’s grid generation task faster and easier while maintaining accuracy.
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