Discrete Viscous Adjoint Method for Solving Aerodynamic Shape Optimization Problems

Kurzfassung

The adjoint approach - which allows fast and accurate evaluations of the gradients with respect to the design parameters - is seen as a promising strategy in numerical shape optimization based on high fidelity methods. After describing the theory of the viscous discrete adjoint method and its implementation within the unstructured RANS solver TAU, the presentation shows all major applications conducted at DLR for solving 2D and 3D aerodynamic shape optimization problems. The latest extention toward wing flight shape optimisations is also presented. On all cases presented, optimizations were successfully performed within a limited number of flows evaluations, confirming the efficiency of the strategy.