Aerodynamic shape optimization of supersonic aircraft configurations via an adjoint formulation on distributed memory parallel computers

This work describes the application of a control theory-based aerodynamic shape optimization method to the problem of supersonic aircraft design. A high fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) algorithm modelling the Euler equations is used to calculate the aerodynamic properties of complex three-dimensional aircraft configurations. The design process is greatly accelerated through the use of both control theory and parallel computing. Control theory is employed to derive the adjoint differential equations whose solution allows for the evaluation of design gradient information at a fraction of the computational cost required by previous design methods. The resulting problem is then implemented in parallel using a domain decomposition approach, an optimized communication schedule, and the Message Passing Interface (MPI) Standard for portability and efficiency. In our earlier studies, the serial implementation of this design method, was shown to be effective for the optimization of airfoils, wings, wing–bodies, and complex aircraft configurations using both the potential equation and the Euler equations. In this work, our concern will be to extend the methodologies such that the combined capabilities of these new technologies can be used routinely and efficiently in an industrial design environment. The aerodynamic optimization of a supersonic transport configuration is presented as a demonstration test case of the capability. A particular difficulty of this test case is posed by the close coupling of the propulsion/airframe integration.