The GoFly Prize is a Boeing-sponsored competition in which more than 3,500 innovators on 824 teams from 103 countries create a personal flying device such as a UAV to compete for $2,000,000 in prizes. In 2018, TotalSim was asked by the GoFly Prize organizers to provide contestants with CFD simulation software allowing the top minds in aerospace to streamline UAV or aircraft innovation and compete in Phase II of the competition.
We agreed sponsor the contest and modified our TS Aero app to enable participants to perform highly-accurate CFD simulations to accelerate their testing and development, making it easy to turn their digital prototypes into a winning reality.
Competitors are aiming to create a personal flyer that is smaller, lighter and quieter than anything that has ever existed before. From this community, 31 Phase II Teams across 16 countries submitted entries and were reviewed by a panel of experts through two rounds of judging.
We’re excited to announce that two of the five recently announced Phase II winners, used our TS Aero app to modify and increase the efficiency of their winning designs.
How winners benefited from TS Aero
One of the GoFly Phase II winners is from Aeroxo in Russia and Latvia and said TS Aero, “has user-friendly interface, results allowed me to tune our design, several crucial upgrades to Aviabike’s general aerodynamics have been made based on TS Aero calculations.”
Another GoFly participant said TS Aero’s “auto meshing and smooth calculations saved much time for those who don’t have a numerical simulator.”
One of the benefits of TS Aero is that through our partnership with AweSIM, the Ohio Supercomputer Center’s (OSC) modeling and simulation program for manufacturers, users don’t have to worry about having enough computational power to run and store simulations.
Using TS Aero’s web interface, designers upload their 3D CAD geometry, then configure and run a CFD simulation to approximate the flow around, and calculate forces on the vehicle. They then utilize a suite of post-processing results to compare and gain insight from key trends and performance data.
More about the GoFly Prize Phase II competition can be found here. We’d like to congratulate all who participated and encourage those who are now competing in Phase III of the competition to continue to innovate and bring their vehicles to life! We can’t wait to see what the teams bring to the 2020 Fly-Off!
If you would like to learn more about TS Aero or any of our simulation apps or services, please contact us here.
Check out the official Phase II winner’s announcement video from GoFly (it’s pretty impressive)