Application of genetic algorithms to the design of airfoil pressure distributions

NLR participates in the ECARF (European Computation Aerodynamics Research Project) "Optimum Design" project, developing an algorithm for multi-point airfoil design. Within the ECARP project a test case has been defined for two-point design with the aid of well-specified target pressure distributions. It appears that optimization of pressure...

Critical evaluation of a finite element method for the calculation of transonic flow based on constrained minimization

The method of Glowinski, Periaux and Pironneau for the calculation of transonic flow, which is based on the constrained minimization of a cost function, is critically evaluated for a case in which the transonic small perturbation equation is used. The resulting minimization problem is discretized in finite element form and solved using a...