Uncertainty Quantification for Aircraft Certification by Analysis

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity focuses on a Postdoctoral Researcher position in Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) for simulation-based analysis and design of aerospace vehicles. Uncertainty quantification is a critical technology for enabling the use of high-fidelity simulations in aircraft certification to reduce reliance on flight testing. The selected candidate will research, develop and apply state-of-the-art nonintrusive statistical methods, including but not limited to dense and sparse quadratures, random sampling and Bayesian statistics to data obtained from high-fidelity, computational fluid dynamics and multidisciplinary simulations. The goal is to affordably characterize the uncertainty in output quantities of interest, for example, aerodynamic performance coefficients, range, and acoustic signatures, due to various input uncertainties, such as operating and meteorological conditions, and aircraft shape. Primary areas of interest are estimating and controlling numerical and model-form errors to improve credibility of numerical predictions, handling discontinuities, such as shocks, that may cause multimodal probability densities, and reducing computational cost of many-query UQ methods such that they can be applied routinely in conjunction with high-fidelity simulations. This position is located in the Computational Aerosciences Branch within the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division.