Integrated Design Optimization of Aerodynamic and Stealthy Performance for Flying Wing Aircraft

Flying wing configuration has become an ideal configuration of the future unmanned aerial vehicles, and it has become the research hotspot of advanced aircraft in recent years. In this article, an optimization strategy is constructed to deal with the aerodynamic and stealthy multidisciplinary design optimization issue of double-swept flying wing aircraft. In order to describe the aircraft accurately, two methods are used to parametric the airfoil profiles of the aircraft CAD model with different leading edge shapes. For the two parametric approaches, geometric parameters of the airfoil are used to define its shape functions. It is analyzed that the parameters of the aircraft impact on aerodynamic performance and stealth capability, which is helpful to improve design. In applying the strategy, the optimization algorithm combining global optimization and gradient algorithm is adopted to search for the optimum design. The optimization results indicate that the optimization strategy can be implemented automatically, and reasonable results are obtained.