Optimization in Aircraft Design

A parallel variable-complexity modeling approach, permitting the efficient use of emerging parallel computing in multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) technology, is presented for the particular instance of High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) design. In this method simple analyses are used to limit the approximation domain based on the D-optimality criterion through the use of a genetic alogorithm. At the D-optimal points, a refined analysis is performed. The optimization code is composed of a sequence of analysis cycles between aerodynamic and structural calculations. Results for coarse grained parallelization of the aerodynamic and structural codes on an Intel Paragon are presented for an example HSCT design problem involving only two variables. The full HSCT design problem employs twenty-eight design variables.