Lars Gräning, Markus Olhofer, Bernhard Sendhoff, "Interaction Detection in Aerodynamic Design Data", Proceedings of the [10th] International Conference on Intelligent Data Egineering and Automated Learning (IDEAL), 2009.

In large and complex aerodynamic systems the overall performance of a design is mainly defined by interactions between design areas rather than by single design regions. Therefore it is necessary to identify these interactions in order to be able to understand and improve the designs. However, detecting and modeling those interactive effects between distant design areas is a very challenging task which usually requires a detailed understanding of the flow patterns and dedicated expert knowledge. In this paper we apply the information theoretic concept of interaction information to aerodynamic design data in order to detect and quantify interaction effects between distant design regions. Information graphs are suggested in order to provide the results to the aerodynamic engineer in a graphical form. In order to show the feasibility of this approach, the information theoretic quantities are applied to the data of a 2D wing assembly as well as to the 3D turbine blade design data.