Aerodynamic design using parallel processors

Abstract

An airfoil design technique has been developed which decreases the computational processing time by more than an order of magnitude when optimizing aerodynamic performance. The practicality of airfoil design using parallel processors and Navier-Stokes flow solvers has been demonstrated. Typically, an airfoil is designed to meet certain criteria based upon its aerodynamic performance at set flight conditions. If an optimization technique is used for airfoil design, the shape of the airfoil is varied, and the aerodynamic performance of numerous airfoil geometries are evaluated using computational fluid dynamics. Multiple aerodynamic performance evaluations require the vast majority of computational processing time used in airfoil design optimization.