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161518 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.161518 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ All Rights Reserved 2021 150 pages Masters Thesis Academic theses Text eng Souders, Tyler Jeffery Takahashi, Timothy T. Herrmann, Marcus Dahm, Werner J.A. Arizona State University Partial requirement for: M.S., Arizona State University, 2021 Field of study: Mechanical Engineering The Vortex-lattice method has been utilized throughout history to both design and analyze the aerodynamic performance characteristics of flight vehicles. There are numerous different programs utilizing this method, each of which has its own set of assumptions and performance limitations. This thesis highlights VORLAX, one such solver, and details its historic and modernized performance characteristics through a series of code improvements and optimizations. With VORLAX, rapid synthesis and verification of aircraft performance data related to wing pressure distributions, stability and control, and Federal Regulation compliance can be quickly and accurately obtained. As such, VORLAX represents a class of efficient yet largely forgotten computational techniques that allow users to explore numerous design solutions in a fraction of the time that would be needed to use more complex, full-fledged engineering tools. In the age of modern computers, one hypothesis is that VORLAX and similar “lean” computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers have preferential performance characteristics relative to expensive, volume grid CFD suites, such as ANSYS Fluent. By utilizing these types of programs, tasks such as pre- and post-processing become trivially simple with basic scripting languages such as Visual Basic for Applications or Python. Thus, lean engineering programs and methodologies deserve their place in modern engineering, despite their wrongfully decreasing prevalence. Mechanical Engineering Aerospace Engineering Aircraft Design Computational Fluid Dynamics Engineering Education Grid Refinement Potential Flow Vortex-Lattice Method Modernization of a Vortex-Lattice Method with Aircraft Design Applications