23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-2.11.1

OPTIMIZATIONS OF AIRFOIL AND WING USING GENETIC ALGORITHM

F. Zhang, S. Chen, M. Khalid
IAR/NRC, Canada

Keywords: genetic algorithm, aerodynamic optimization, cfd, airfoil, wing

The present study demonstrates how the Genetic Algorithm (GA), coupled with the CFD solvers ARC2D for 2D and KTRAN for 3D problems, can successfully be applied to the airfoil and wing aerodynamic drag minimization. The geometry of airfoil and wing sections is represented by a B-spline curve. The actual values of the coordinates of the control nodes for the B-spline curve are designated as the design variables. The NACA0012 airfoil is optimized. The drag coefficient is reduced by 46.1%. For the corresponding straight wing, the drag coefficient is reduced by 13.5%. The results demonstrate the powerful reliability and robustness of this technique.

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