Aerodynamic Optimization of Supersonic Transport Wing Using Unstructured Adjoint Method

Abstract

In the application of gradient-based methods to practical aerodynamic design problems, one of the major concerns is an accurate and efficient calculation of sensitivity derivatives of an aerodynamic objective function. Sensitivity derivatives can be evaluated robustly and efficiently by using a sensitivity analysis code based either on a direct method or on an adjoint method. An adjoint method is preferable in aerodynamic designs because it is more economical when the number of design variables is larger than the total number of an objective function and constraints.