Summary of the CFD 2030 Integration Committee Invited Panel on Physics Based Model Improvement and Uncertainty Quantification for the Digital Engineering Transformation

In 2018, the DoD published its Digital Engineering Strategy where they identified five (5) Goals and Focus Areas. Goal 3, “Incorporate Technological Innovation to Improve the Engineering Practice”, identified many of the Technology Innovations that were highlighted in the CFD 2030 report such as Physics-Based Models, Computing Technology, Data Visualization, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data Analytics. The CFD 2030 report specifically identified research and development needs and associated roadmaps that address the DoD Digital Engineering Goals by enabling the AIAA community to “derive useful information from the simulations,” and to perform “smart knowledge extraction from large-scale databases and simulations, automate the process of sifting through large amounts of information, often at a number of different geographic locations, and extracting patterns and actionable design decisions”. At the AIAA AVIATION 2022 conference, an invited panel session was held which strived to address the big question of - How to use Physics-Based Simulations to create models that enable decision makers to make confident informed choices in diverse engineering disciplines such as aerodynamics, structures, stability, guidance, and control during a vehicle design cycle. This paper summarizes and documents the presentations and conclusions.