Aerodynamic Sensitivity Analysis Methods for the Compressible Euler Equations

A mathematical formulation is developed for aerodynamic sensitivity coefficients based on a discretized form of the compressible, two-dimensional Euler equations. A brief motivating introduction to the aerodynamic sensitivity analysis and the reasons behind an integrated flow/sensitivity analysis for design algorithms are presented. Two approaches to determine the aerodynamic sensitivity coefficients, namely, the finite difference approach, and the quasi-analytical approach are discussed with regards to their relative accuracies and involved computational efforts. In the quasi-analytical approach, the direct and the adjoint variable methods are formulated and assessed. Also, several methods to solve the system of linear algebraic equations, that arises in the quasi-analytical approach, are investigated with regards to their accuracies, computational time and memory requirements. A new flow prediction concept, which is an outcome of the direct method in the quasi-analytical approach, is developed and illustrated with an example. Surface pressure coefficient distributions of a nozzle-afterbody configuration obtained from the predicted flow-field solution are compared successfully with their corresponding values obtained from a flowfield analysis code and the experimental data.