More efficient and practical multidisciplinary integrated optimization method for aircraft conceptual design

We aim to make Concurrent Subspace Optimization (CSSO) more efficient and practical for aircraft conceptual design by combining Uniform Design (UD) with quadratic polynomial Response Surface Method (RSM). In this paper, we explain in much detail how to exploit UD and quadratic polynomial RSM fully to make CSSO more efficient and practical. UD is used to improve the uniformity of initial sample points, and RSM is employed to provide reasonably accurate models approximating the relationships between state variables and design variables. A conceptual design for general-aviation aircraft was performed to test our improved CSSO. This conceptual design problem was divided into three disciplines, including aerodynamics, weight and performance discipline, and the optimization models were set up respectively. Each optimization model was much smaller than the original one and could be performed concurrently. Calculations in our conceptual design of general-aviation aircraft show that the occasional difficulty - failing to converge due to non-uniform initial sample points - when using CSSO simply did not appear; our method unceasingly added new sample points that approached the optimum more closely to make response surface attain higher precision; thus our multidisciplinary integrated optimization method for aircraft conceptual design does appear to be more efficient and practical.