Numerical optimization in aerodynamic design with application to a supersonic transport aircraft

A numerical optimization code for the aerodynamic design of wing-body configurations has been recently developed at ONERA. This optimization code has been built by coupling the CONMIN (CONstrained MINimization) code of G.N. Vanderplaats which performs the constrained minimization of a function of N variables with as ONERA Euler code for aerodynamic computations. For this purpose, a geometry generator taking into account a great number of design variables and an automatic grid generator have also been developed. In the first part of this paper, the general organization of the ONERA optimization code is presented. In a second part, the first results from an application of this code to the design of a supersonic transport aircraft are presented and the strategy of optimization is discussed.