A non-intrusive reduced order model using deep learning for realistic wind data generation for small unmanned aerial systems in urban spaces

Realistic wind data are essential in developing, testing, and ensuring the safety of unmanned aerial systems in operation. Alternatives to Dryden and von Kármán turbulence models are required, aimed explicitly at urban air spaces to generate turbulent wind data. We present a novel method to generate realistic wind data for the safe operation of small unmanned aerial vehicles in urban spaces. We propose a non-intrusive reduced order modeling approach to replicate realistic wind data and predict wind fields. The method uses a well-established large-eddy simulation model, the parallelized large eddy simulation model, to generate high-fidelity data. To create a reduced-order model, we utilize proper orthogonal decomposition to extract modes from the three-dimensional space and use specialized recurrent neural networks and long-term short memory for stepping in time. This paper combines the traditional approach of using computational fluid dynamic simulations to generate wind data with deep learning and reduced-order modeling techniques to devise a methodology for a non-intrusive data-based model for wind field prediction. A simplistic model of an isolated urban subspace with a single building setup in neutral atmospheric conditions is considered a test case for the demonstration of the method.