Robust airfoil optimization based on improved particle swarm optimization method

Abstract

A robust airfoil optimization platform is constructed based on the modified particle swarm optimization method (i.e., the second-order oscillating particle swarm method), which consists of an efficient optimization algorithm, a precise aerodynamic analysis program, a high accuracy surrogate model, and a classical airfoil parametric method. There are two improvements for the modified particle swarm method compared with the standard particle swarm method. First, the particle velocity is represented by the combination of the particle position and the variation of position, which makes the particle swarm algorithm a second-order precision method with respect to the particle position. Second, for the sake of adding diversity to the swarm and enlarging the parameter searching domain to improve the global convergence performance of the algorithm, an oscillating term is introduced to the update formula of the particle velocity. At last, taking two airfoils as examples, the aerodynamic shapes are optimized on this optimization platform. It is shown from the optimization results that the aerodynamic characteristic of the airfoils is greatly improved in a broad design range.