A multi-point optimization for transonic airfoil design

© 1992 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.A two-point, aerodynamic design method is presented which improves the aerodynamic performance of transonic airfoils over a range of the flight envelope. It couples an Euler flow solver and a numerical optimization tool. The major limitation of single-point design is the poor off-design performance. Two-point design is used to extend the optimized performance range over more of the desired flight envelope. The method is applied to several transonic flow design points, and the results are compared to single-point design results. The secondary design-points are chosen by varying the angle-of-attack, and the angle-of-attack and Mach-number. The two-point designs perform better than the single-point design over the design-point range