Aerodynamic optimization of rotor airfoil based on multi-layer hierarchical constraint method

Rotor airfoil design is investigated in this paper. There are many difficulties for this high-dimensional multi-objective problem when traditional multi-objective optimization methods are used. Therefore, a multi-layer hierarchical constraint method is proposed by coupling principal component analysis (PCA) dimensionality reduction and ε-constraint method to translate the original high-dimensional problem into a bi-objective problem. This paper selects the main design objectives by conducting PCA to the preliminary solution of original problem with consideration of the priority of design objectives. According to the ε-constraint method, the design model is established by treating the two top-ranking design goals as objective and others as variable constraints. A series of bi-objective Pareto curves will be obtained by changing the variable constraints, and the favorable solution can be obtained by analyzing Pareto curve spectrum. This method is applied to the rotor airfoil design and makes great improvement in aerodynamic performance. It is shown that the method is convenient and efficient, beyond which, it facilitates decision-making of the high-dimensional multi-objective engineering problem.