Abstract

From the aircraft design point of view, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of environmental impact can be achieved by designing new aircraft configurations. Advancing these new designs requires more sophisticated computational design tools that: (1) integrate the multiple disciplines more tightly and accurately than current tools (2) increase the fidelity in the modeling of those disciplines and (3) allow the design with respect to a large number of multidisciplinary design variables. We propose the development of advanced high-fidelity multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) algorithms that can address these three compounding challenges through research in applied mathematics, algorithms, and their application to aircraft design. We present our progress toward a high-fidelity multidisciplinary optimization framework for aircraft design that currently focuses on the aerodynamics, structures, and their coupling. Recent developments and results in aerodynamic shape optimization are presented that demonstrate how new configurations might be explored using these new tools. The theoretical framework for the coupling of aerodynamics and structures is also presented, together with aerostructural optimization results that demonstrate the potential and feasibility of high-fidelity MDO.

Biographies

Dr. Zingg has been a Professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies for the past twenty-three years and has been the Director since 2006. His research areas include aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, and aerodynamic shape optimization. His current research is concentrated on applying high-fidelity aerodynamic shape optimization to the design of novel aircraft configurations motivated by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. Together with two colleagues from NASA, he is a co-author of the textbook Fundamentals of Computational Fluid Dynamics, published by Springer in 2001. As Director of UTIAS, he has championed the need to reduce the impact of aviation on climate change. Dr. Zingg has held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Computational Aerodynamics since 2001, was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004, received the University of Toronto Faculty Award in 2009 and currently holds the J. Armand Bombardier Foundation Chair in Aerospace Flight. He serves on the board of directors of the Green Aviation Research and Development Network (GARDN), which brings together government, academic, and industrial partners to foster the development of technologies to reduce aircraft noise and emissions.

Joaquim R. R. A. Martins is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, where he heads the Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Laboratory (MDO Lab). Until August 2009 he was an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies where he held the Tier II Canada Research Chair in Multidisciplinary Optimization since 2002. He received his undergraduate degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College, London, with a British Aerospace Award. He obtained both his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Ballhaus prize for best thesis in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was a keynote speaker at the International Forum on Aeroelasticity and Structural Dynamics, and received the Best Paper Award in the AIAA Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization Conference twice. Prof. Martins is a member of the AIAA MDO Technical Committee and was the technical co-chair for the 2008 AIAA Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization Conference. He is also an Associate Editor for the Optimization and Engineering journal.