Zenotech is excited to be presenting at ICAS next month – the prestigious 33rd Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS) which will take place in Stockholm from 4 to 9 September 2022. Our newest team member, Rob Spencer, is also presenting at ICAS on behalf of CFMS about an ATI (Aerospace Technology Institute) project, Aero Flux (which Zenotech was also involved in).

We caught up with Rob to discover more about his talk at ICAS, CFD and aero, and his new role at Zenotech…

What’s your presentation at ICAS about?

It’s about using CFD (predicting airflow around components by simulating the flow using a computer) to predict the noise from an aeroplane’s landing gear as it comes in to land. The specific CFD techniques we’re using are innovative, meaning we can predict the noise faster and at a lower cost than conventional CFD techniques.

The results are based on a standard test case of a gulf stream jet’s landing gear. There is much experimental data on this test case, and in our paper we compare our results to the experimental data and simulations by others.

The work was carried out under the ‘Aero Flux’ project, an ATI project involving Zenotech and CFMS.

What was your role at CFMS?

I was at CFMS for about 18 months, as a CFD Engineer. I worked on ATI sponsored projects, looking at the acoustics of aerofoils and landing gear, and fluid structure interaction for wings.

What’s your new role at Zenotech?

I started at Zenotech in June, and again I’m working as a CFD engineer on projects in the aerospace sector.

What are you looking forward to about working at Zenotech?

I moved to Zenotech because of the depth of expertise in CFD at the company. I’m looking forward to learning more about running zCFD in a commercial context, and contributing to the CFD software codebase.

Finally, what are the benefits of the results you’re presenting at ICAS for the aero industry?

Landing and take off noise are of great concern to those who live and work near airports, so there’s strict legislation aimed at reducing it. Therefore, landing gear noise reduction is an area of commercial interest to aerospace companies.

Aircraft noise is traditionally very expensive and time consuming to simulate using CFD. By making acoustic simulations cheaper and faster, the techniques presented in our paper could allow engineers to reach an optimum landing gear design much faster than is currently possible.

We look forward to the ICAS Congress and hearing more about Rob’s work in the coming months…

Find out more about ICAS Congress 2022 here.

Read more about our feature in ATI’s Destination Zero.