Quasi-three-dimensional aerodynamic solver for multidisciplinary design optimization of lifting surfaces

Mariens, J., Elham, A. and Van Tooren, M.J.L. (2014) Quasi-three-dimensional aerodynamic solver for multidisciplinary design optimization of lifting surfaces. Journal of Aircraft, 51 (2). (doi:10.2514/1.C032261).

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a quasi-three-dimensional aerodynamic solver, which provides accurate results for wing drag comparable to the higher-fidelity aerodynamic solvers at significantly lower computational costs. The proposed solver calculates the viscous wing drag using the combination of a two-dimensional airfoil analysis tool with a vortex lattice code. Validation results show that the results of the quasi-three-dimensional solver are in good agreement with higher-fidelity computational fluid dynamics solvers. The quasi-three-dimensional solver is used for a wing shape multidisciplinary design optimization. A multidisciplinary design optimization problem is formulated to design the wing shape of a typical passenger aircraft. The aircraft maximum takeoff weight is considered as the objective function. Two optimization algorithms, a local and a global optimum finder, are implemented in the multidisciplinary design optimization system. The optimization results indicate that the global optimization algorithm shows a slightly greater reduction in maximum takeoff weight. However, finding the global optimum needs about 20 times the computational time of the local optimization algorithm.

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