Applications of modeFRONTIER on Aeronautical Problems: an overview of experiences at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR)

The presentation will give an overview of the work performed at the German Aerospace Center, Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology, on the applications of modeFRONTIER optimization framework for solving industry relevant aeronautical problems. The efficiency of the gradient based optimization strategies NLPQLP will be for instance assessed on high-lift device design to improve the take off performance of an aircraft. Here the aerodynamic coefficients are computed thanks to in-house Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method and combined with the adjoint approach for efficient computation of the sensitivities. Such approach allows designing a new high-lift configuration in a turn around time never obtained so far. On more complex problems featuring multi-modal design space, robust optimization strategies are of main importance to ensure to be not trapped by a local minimum. The use of genetic algorithm is here of particular interest and has been applied to find innovative flight procedures for helicopter allowing noise abatement. Finally, in the case where the design has to deal with different goal functions that can not be easily combined, the use of Multi-Objective approach is of great help to find a set of good candidates. Such approaches was applied for the design of a green supersonic aircraft that has to feature low sonic boom signature, low maximum take of weight while ensuring a given flight range. All these examples will be presented in details during the talk and the lesson learned will be addressed as well