Aerodynamic shape optimization of rotor airfoils undergoing unsteady motion

tract The objective of the present study is to suggest a new design method that can handle dynamic response of an airfoil undergoing unsteady motion and flow condition. To achieve this goal, a new objective function and constraints are defined to represent overall characteristics over a single cycle and a weighting function is also introduced to enable a designer to determine specific design point. Response surface methodolo,g is exclusively employed to construct and optimize the response surface models of objective functions and constraints. To show the feasibility of the present design procedure, inverse design is performed and through this, it is proved that response surface methodology can reliably find the global optimum in the given design space. The overall performance of optimized rotor airfoils is superior to that of baseline airfoil. However, the optimized airfoil shapes show a little variation with weighting function. The results indicate that the effects of weighting functions are correctly implemented in design process.