| The purpose of the present work is to summarize the findings of a multiobjective shape optimization study conducted for a subsonic submerged air vehicle inlet. The objective functions of the optimization problem are distortion and swirl indices defined by the distribution of flow parameters over the exit cross-section of the inlet. The geometry alteration is performed by placing a protrusion in the shape of a fin on the baseline inlet surface. Thus, the design variables of the optimization problem are chosen to be the geometrical parameters defining the fin protrusion; namely fin height, length and incidence angle. The Trade Off (also known as epsilon-constraint) method is employed for finding the Pareto optimal set formed by the nondominated solutions of the feasible design space. Since the flow domain solution is required for every step along the line search, an automated optimization loop is constructed by integrating the optimizer with a surface modeler, a mesh generator and a flow solver through which the flow parameters over the compressor face are computed. In addition, the trade study for fin protrusion, the analyses and the comparison of the baseline and Pareto optimal solutions are presented and observations concerning grid resolution and convergence behaviour are discussed. The results display an irregular and discontinuous Pareto optimal set. Optimum inlet designs are scattered in two regions from which one representative inlet design is chosen and analyzed. As a result, it is concluded that an inlet designer has two options within the framework of this optimization study: an inlet design with high swirl but low distortion or an inlet design with low swirl but higher distortion. |
