Development and Application of a Flexible and Efficient Environment for Aerodynamic Shape Optimisation

Abstract

Within the next few years numerical shape optimisation based on high fidelity methods is likely to play a strategic role in future aircraft design. In this context, suitable tools have to be developed for solving aerodynamic shape optimisation problems. Based on the unstructured RANS solver TAU, the major key components recently developed, e.g. the free form deformation or the adjoint approach, are described in detail and applied for optimising the DLR-F6 wing-body aircraft configuration. The flexibility and efficiency of the meshing procedure, the optimisation strategy, tha adjoint approach and the parametrisation have been assessed.