Aerodynamic Design of Transonic Wings Using the Target Pressure Optimization Approach

A design study of transonic wings has been performed by the hybrid inverse optimization method. An existing target pressure optimization code for the transonic airfoil inverse design has been extended to obtain a target pressure distribution for transonic wing design. The shock strength was minimized and the isobar line sweep angle on the upper surface of the wing was maximized to obtain minimum compressibility drag. With the target pressure at each design section, an inverse design code was run to obtain a subsequent wing geometry. The designed wing showed better performance than the baseline wing at the given design condition, and geometric constraints on the section contour area were successfully satisfied. Design result showed that the inverse design using the target pressure optimization approach is very efficient in obtaining a transonic wing of high performance at a given design condition. However, single-point designs do not guarantee off-design performance. Multi-point design is needed to obtain a transonic wing of high performance at broader range of flow conditions.