Aerodynamic aircraft design for mission performance by multipoint optimization

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of multiple operating conditions design, in the context of optimal aircraft mission performance and from the aerodynamic point of view. In particular, the choice of the flight conditions to be included in the optimization problem from desired condition ranges has to be done such that the optimization problem is wellpoised with a minimal computational cost. To this aim, a new method called Gradient Span Analysis is given, based on the analysis of the linear dependencies provided by adjoint sensitivities. A wing-body configuration is presented as test case and optimization results show the interest in terms of computational time savings. Physical interpretation of the method is also given.