Review of Robust Aerodynamic Design Optimization for Air Vehicles

The ever-increasing demands for risk-free, resource-efficient and environment-friendly air vehicles motivate the development of advanced design methodology. As a particularly promising design methodology considering uncertainties, robust aerodynamic design optimization (RADO) is capable of providing robust and reliable aerodynamic configuration and reducing cost under probable uncertainties in the flight envelop and all life cycle of air vehicle. However, the major challenges including high computational cost with increasing dimensionality of uncertainty and complex RADO procedure hinder the wider application of RADO. In this paper, the complete RADO procedure, i.e., uncertainty modeling, establishment of uncertainty quantification approach as well as robust optimization subject to reliability constraints under uncertainty, is elaborated. Systematic reviews of RADO methodology including uncertainty modeling methods, comprehensive uncertainty quantification approaches, and robust optimization methods are provided. Further, this paper presents a brief survey of the main applications of RADO in the aerodynamic design of transonic flow and natural-laminar-flow, and discusses the application prospects of RADO methodology for air vehicles. The detailed statement of the paper indicates the intention, i.e., to present the state of the art in RADO methodology, to highlight the key techniques and primary challenges in RADO, and to provide the beneficial directions for future researches.