An Optimization Method for an Aircraft Rear-end Conceptual Design Based on Surrogate Models.

A new conceptual design method is presented that is based on the minimization of a target function subject to some restrictions using surrogates. Specifically, the surrogates are used to speed up the calculation of both the various ingredients of the target function and the restrictions. The surrogates are based on a combination of high order singular value decomposition (resulting from a set of snapshots that are calculated using a computational fluid dynamics solver) and modal interpolation. The method is both flexible and much more computationally efficient than the conventional method, especially if the number of design parameters is large. The method is illustrated considering a simplified version of the conceptual design of an aircraft empennage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]