Aircraft multidisciplinary design optimization using design of experiments theory and response surface modeling methods
Anthony Giunta · VTechWorks (Virginia Tech) · 1997
) Design engineers often employ numerical optimization techniques to assist in the evaluation and comparison of new aircraft configurations. While the use of numerical optimization methods is largely successful, the presence of numerical noise in realistic engineering optimization problems often inhibits the use of many gradient-based optimization techniques. Numerical noise causes inaccurate gradient calculations which in turn slows or prevents convergence during optimization. The problems created by numerical noise are particularly acute in aircraft design applications where a single aerodynamic or structural analysis of a realistic aircraft configuration may require tens of CPU hours on a supercomputer. The computational expense of the analyses coupled with the convergence difficulties created by numerical noise are significant obstacles to performing aircraft multidisciplinary design optimization. To address these issues, a procedure has been developed to create two types of noise...