Immersed Boundary Based Computational Fluid Dynamics Applied to Aerodynamic Design Optimization

Abstract

In aerodynamic shape optimization using meta-heuristics such as evolutionary algorithms, the body-fitted mesh method based computer fluid dynamics is often employed. However, it has difficulty in the efficiency and the accuracy, and can undermine the advantages of the global optimization methods. The mesh generation also decides success or failure of individual evaluation. In this study, we developed a method for the global aerodynamic optimization based on the computational fluid dynamics that can robustly calculate arbitrary-shaped flowfields based on the Cartesian mesh with the immersed boundary method instead of the body-fitted mesh. The method was examined by solving two airfoil design problem.