Massively Parallel Industry-strength Design of Aerodynamic Wings

AbstractThe paper addresses an application of the software product OPTIMENGA_AERO to a real-life design of aerodynamic shapes. The optimization method employs Genetic Algorithms which make use of a full Navier-Stokes solver for accurate estimation of major aerodynamic coefficients in the evaluation of the objective function. Thereby, the implementation of the method requires huge computational resources, which makes efficient parallelization crucial for successful promotion of the method to an engineering environment. The algorithm is based on a multilevel embedded parallelization approach, which includes five levels of parallelization. Multi-point aerodynamic shape design (implemented on a medium-size distributed memory cluster) deals with transonic wing optimization for minimum drag in the presence of multiple nonlinear constraints. The software has showed its robustness in the demanding industrial environment when applied to real-life industrial design. The results demonstrate high accuracy of optimization combined with high parallel efficiency. The results indicate that the described computational technology may allow for a technological breakthrough in the industrial aerodynamic design of air vehicles in aircraft industry