Pressure distribution guided supercritical wing optimization

Pressure distribution is important information for engineers during an aerodynamic design process. Pressure Distribution Oriented (PDO) optimization design has been proposed to introduce pressure distribution manipulation into traditional performance dominated optimization. In previous PDO approaches, constraints or manual manipulation have been used to obtain a desirable pressure distribution. In the present paper, a new Pressure Distribution Guided (PDG) method is developed to enable better pressure distribution manipulation while maintaining optimization efficiency. Based on the RBF-Assisted Differential Evolution (RADE) algorithm, a surrogate model is built for target pressure distribution features. By introducing individuals suggested by sub-optimization on the surrogate model into the population, the direction of optimal searching can be guided. Pressure distribution expectation and aerodynamic performance improvement can be achieved at the same time. The improvements of the PDG method are illustrated by comparing its design results and efficiency on airfoil optimization test cases with those obtained using other methods. Then the PDG method is applied on a dual-aisle airplane’s inner-board wing design. A total drag reduction of 8 drag counts is achieved.