Multidisciplinary design optimization of gas-generator body

To exploit a generic multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) method on liquid propellant rocket engines, a gas-generator body in a liquid propellant rocket engine was used as the object of this research. Based on the design-oriented multidisciplinary analysis, the multidisciplinary design optimization model of the gas-generator body was constructed. Three coupling disciplines, fluid dynamics, heat transfer and mechanics were included in the MDO model. A new multi-objective method called physical programming was introduced to deal with the multi-objective optimization problem in this research. In physical programming, the objective in the optimization problem reflects the preference of designers through class function, which avoids the balance among objectives with different magnitudes and dimensions. The result shows that the mass of the gas generator was reduced and the original design was improved by multidisciplinary design optimization. Multidisciplinary design optimization can be used to obtain the better design of the whole liquid propellant rocket engines.