Modification of PARSEC Airfoil Representation and Investigation of Design Performance

The original PARSEC (PARametric SECtion) method can satisfactorily solve the optimization problems involving transonic airfoils by using a few design variables. However, it is difficult to apply this method to the design of airfoils under other conditions such as supersonic flow and low Reynolds number flow. To solve various airfoil design problems by using a few design variables and the PARSEC representation, a modified PARSEC representation is proposed. The capability of the proposed modified representation to solve unknown real-world design problems is investigated; the proposed representation is used along with multi-objective genetic algorithms to solve two types of problems. One is the design of a conventional transonic airfoil that is to be used in the Earth\u27s atmosphere; the other is the design of an airfoil that is to be used in the Martian atmosphere. To evaluate the aerodynamic performance of the airfoils, the structured Navier-Stokes solver is used. The results indicate that better solutions can be obtained by using the proposed PARSEC modification than by using the original PARSEC representation, especially in the Martian atmosphere