The goal of this hackathon is to introduce you to some of the ways that high-performance engineering industries are leveraging nTop to help accelerate how they move from requirements to design. We want you to walk away with a basic understanding of how to parametrize an implicit model for design exploration and capture your engineering logic as you iterate towards an optimal design. The problem statement is intended to guide you through some of the basics and direct your exploration, but feel free to put your own spin on it and focus on what is most interesting to you!
Problem Statement
Click here to download the starter file for the hackathon. Your objective is to parametrize the aircraft to capture your engineering logic and enable rapid design space exploration. We have listed three specific requirements below to help you get started, but feel free to focus on improving any aspect of the model that is most interesting to you.
Basic requirements:
- Motor placement is connected to the wing parametrization
- Payloads fit within the fuselage (ideally to minimize required volume)
- The center of gravity is in the proper position relative to the wings
Step-by-Step Guide to Parametrizing Motor Mounts
Start by opening the properties (click on the ?) of the “Wing Root Point” variable and drag the “x” property into the “x” value of the “Motor R Placement” block. Show and hide blocks with the radio button in the top right. “V” is the hot key to turn visibility on and off, “T” is the hot key to make a body transparent.
This only captures part of the parametric relationship. Right click on the “Y” parameter for “Motor R Placement” and make a variable, then do some math to capture the effect of “LE Sweep Angle” on the motor placement.
To add a new block, start typing in an input field, double click between blocks, or search through the toolbar at the top.
Do a similar process to capture the effects of the “Dihedral” angle parameter.
This is not necessarily the best way to parametrize the motor placement – see if you can come up with a better approach!
Guide to Parametrizing Fuselage Splines
The top, side, and bottom fuselage curves are created with a spline that goes through a list of points. You can add additional points to the list by clicking on the “+”, and you can right click on points to re-order them in the list. Click on the radio button in the top right of the points list to see the points appear.
If you want to parametrize coordinates of a point, you can right click and select “convert to point block”. You can then define mathematic relationships between variables and specific point coordinates. In the screenshot below, I use the Y coordinate of the max point on the battery to drive the Y coordinate of a spline point.
In addition to the fidelity of your design, analysis, and optimization explorations, your final model will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
- How well have you captured your engineering logic in your notebook
- How well have you parametrized the model to capture design intent
TV2 Aircraft for Exploration
NOTE: This model was originally derived from Titan Dynamics Tornado V2 design and is subject to their Creative Commons – Attribution – Non-Commercial license.
Click here to download the full TV2 Aircraft file.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get access to nTop?
You can request a free educational license by following this link and completing the form.
Can I access nTop Learn?
You can access all the content on nTop Learn if you have an active educational license.
Additional Resources
If you still have any questions, feel free to reach out to support@ntop.com