Component-based geometry manipulation for aerodynamic shape optimization with overset meshes

Abstract

© 2017 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.Mesh generation for high-fidelity CFD simulation and aerodynamic shape optimization is a timeconsuming task. We can model complex geometries accurately using overset meshes where multiple high-quality structured meshes corresponding to different aircraft components overlap to model the full aircraft configuration. Nevertheless, from the geometry manipulation standpoint, most methods operate on the entire geometry rather than on each component, which diminishes the advantages of overset meshes. To address this issue, we introduce a geometry module that operates on individual components and automatically computes their intersections to automate the overset mesh updates during optimization. This method is also differentiated to compute derivatives with respect to component-based design variables and is integrated within an optimization framework. Using these automatically updated meshes and the corresponding derivatives, we perform aerodynamic shape optimization including the wing-body intersection for the DLR-F6 geometry and achieve a reduction of 15 drag counts (5%) compared to the baseline design.