Title: Robust Conceptual Design of Transonic Airfoils
Abstract: This paper describes an integrated, multi-fidelity analysis and heuristic design approach that can be used to derive initial airfoil designs for transonic flight. If successful, the final result is a geometry that can be expected to produce reasonable aerodynamic performance when used with higher order analysis methods. A key aspect of the methodology is the use of a ``sonic-plateau'' pressure distribution as the target distribution for inverse design. The sonic-plateau distribution is easily parameterized and has the advantage of automatically resulting in a smooth airfoil shape without any discontinuities built into the surface due to the presence of a shock in the target pressure distribution. Inverse design is performed on each airfoil using a parametrically defined pressure distribution at a reduced lift coefficient and Mach number from the design condition. The methodology is demonstrated by designing an airfoil at 38\% of the wing semispan for a 737-200-like aircraft. The demonstration problem shows that the methodology is able to achieve rapid and robust convergence to the solution. The calculated drag-divergence Mach number for the designed airfoil was found to be sufficiently higher than the design Mach number, and the maximum thickness was close to the targeted value.
Publication Year: 2020
Publication Date: 2020-01-05
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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