Research of structural optimization with the constraints of aerodynamics and radar cross section (RCS) of aircraft

The development of structural optimization calls for considering the influence of aerodynamics and radar cross section (RCS) of aircraft. So models and software's flow charts for structural optimization based on Concurrent Subspace Optimization (CSSO), with the constraints of aerodynamics and radar cross section (RCS) are presented and studied. The response surface technique is adopted to simulate the single disciplinary model, including structure disciplinary, aerodynamics disciplinary and radar detection, and the dimension of input variables for response surface is decreased by distinguishing system variables which explicitly impact more than one subsystem from local variables which explicitly impact only one subsystem. The new constructing response surface method is integrated into a two-level optimization frame to solve complex engineering systems, in which system level optimizer optimizes system design variables and subsystem level optimizers optimize local design variables. These measures will reduce the times of single disciplinary re-analysis greatly. The effectiveness of the models, software flow charts and techniques for improving optimization process in this paper is shown by an example, which is about design optimization of a wing structure in 'global hawk aircraft'.