Multifidelity Response Surface Model for Hsct Wing Bending Material Weight

Response surface techniques allow us to combine results from a large number of inexpensive low fidelity analyses with a small number of expensive high fidelity analyses for constructing inexpensive and accurate approximations. The paper demonstrates this approach by constructing approximations to wing bending material weight of a high speed civil transport (HSCT). The approximations employ a large number of structural optimizations of finite element models for a range of HSCT configurations. Thousands of structural optimizations of coarse finite element models are used to construct a quadratic response surface model. Then about a hundred structural optimizations of refined finite element models are used to construct linear correction response surface models. The usefulness of the approximations is demonstrated by performing aerodynamic optimizations of the HSCT while employing the response surface models to estimate wing bending material weight. The approximations for the final HSCT designs are compared to results of structural optimizations of the refined finite element model.