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An Inverse Design Method for Supersonic Airfoils

Airfoil design is one of the most important aspects of aircraft design. Slight changes in airfoil geometry can lead to significant changes in a wide variety of aircraft performance metrics. Inverse design methods offer an efficient alternative to standard direct methods. The key to this design problem is to derive a direct relationship between changes in airfoil geometry and changes in pressure or velocity distributions. This relationship is then used to modify an initial airfoil and its pressure distribution to match a target pressure distribution, which is specified by design parameters. At this point, the engineer now has a final airfoil based off of the design requirements.
This paper attempts to provide a quick and easy inverse design method for a wide variety of supersonic scenarios. This is accomplished by using the class-shape transformation technique to parameterize airfoils during an iterative process. The robustness of the method is demonstrated through several distinct design cases including supersonic airfoils, unique geometries, and a Sears-Haack body.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:CALPOLY/oai:digitalcommons.calpoly.edu:theses-1773
Date01 May 2012
CreatorsSkare, Steven Edward
PublisherDigitalCommons@CalPoly
Source SetsCalifornia Polytechnic State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceMaster's Theses

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