Reliability-Based Multidisciplinary Optimization for Aircraft Wing Design

Aircraft wing design typically involves multiple disciplines such as aerodynamics and structure. Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) has been recently used to deal with the multidisciplinary efforts in wing design. When reliability is considered, MDO for the wing design becomes much more computationally intensive. To improve the efficiency, the strategy of using Sequential Optimization and Reliability Assessment (SORA) in MDO is proposed with the application of a simplified wing design problem. The overall reliability-based MDO is decomposed into sequential cycles of deterministic MDO and reliability analysis. The reliability analysis is therefore decoupled from the MDO loop, and the number of reliability analyses is then reduced significantly. It is shown that the use of the SORA method is efficient through the demonstration of a light aircraft wing design problem.