Aerostructural Wing Shape Optimization assisted by Algorithmic Differentiation

Abstract

With more efficient structures, last trends in aeronautics have witnessed an increased flexibility of wings, calling for adequate design and optimization approaches. To correctly model the coupled physics, aerostructural optimization has progressively become more important, being nowadays performed also considering higher-fidelity discipline methods, i.e., CFD for aerodynamics and FEM for structures. In this paper a methodology for high-fidelity gradient-based aerostructural optimization of wings, including aerodynamic and structural nonlinearities, is presented. The main key feature of the method is its modularity: each discipline solver, independently employing algorithmic differentiation for the evaluation of adjoint-based sensitivities, is interfaced at high-level by means of a wrapper to both solve the aerostructural primal problem and evaluate exact discrete gradients of the coupled problem. The implemented capability, ad-hoc created to demonstrate the methodology, and freely available within the open-source SU2 multiphysics suite, is applied to perform aerostructural optimization of aeroelastic test cases based on the ONERA M6 and NASA CRM wings. Single-point optimizations, employing Euler or RANS flow models, are carried out to find wing optimal outer mold line in terms of aerodynamic efficiency. Results remark the importance of taking into account the aerostructural coupling when performing wing shape optimization.