Study of a global design space exploration method for aerospace vehicles
Chuck A. Baker, Layne T. Watson, Bernard Grossman, Raphael T. Haftka, William H. Mason · 8th Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization · 2000
In the early stages of the design process of aerospace vehicles, the search for optimal configurations encompasses a broad range of possibilities, and the use of local optimization tools may risk missing the best designs. Therefore, global optimization methods are attractive for the early design stage. Unfortunately, global design optimization usually requires the evaluation of a very large number of designs, a formidable computational challenge. The present work uses a highly effective Lipschitzian global optimization algorithm in the multidisciplinary optimization of a High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT). The use of massively parallel computers to handle this computational challenge is also demonstrated. A variety of load balancing methods are evaluated to assess the utilization of the computer nodes.