Applications

Isolated Airfoil
Shape Optimization

Positioning of the
slat & flap of a
3-element airfoil

Optimal Airfoil
Shapes at different
operating conditions

Combined Cycle
Power Plant
Optimization

Isolated Airfoil Shape Optimization

EASY used for the redesign of an existing isolated airfoil, at transonic flow conditions (M_inf=0.73, a_inf=3 deg ). The target of the new design (right) was to minimize the drag, while maintaining the lift of the initial airfoil (left). The cost function is defined as

Since a costly CFD tool was used for the evaluation of any candidate solution, EASY offers the possibility of reducing the computing cost through resorting to a surrogate model, such as artificial neural networks. The figure below demonstrates a typical gain (red line) in CPU time (or, equivalently, in number of evaluations required to achieve a certain cost), compared to the convergence of a stand-alone evolutionary algorithm (black line).