Aerodynamic Optimization of Transonic Wing Design Based on Evolutionary Algorithm

Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) is applied to a practical three-dimensional shape optimization for aerodynamic design of an aircraft wing. Aerodynamic performances of the design candidates are evaluated by using the three-dimensional compressive Navier-Stokes equations. A structural constraint is introduced to avoid an apparent solution of zero thickness wing for low drag in high speeds. To overcome enormous computational time necessary for the optimization, the computation is parallelized on Numerical Wind Tunnel at National Aerospace Laboratory in Japan, a parallel computer with 166 vector-processing elements. The results ensure the capability of the EA in handling large-scale design optimizations.