| This thesis presents details of the research done in the area of Soft Computing (SC) applications for aircraft design optimization. An architecture formulation and implementation for design and optimization applications using SC techniques is presented. Applications of the developed architecture are presented in the framework of different aircraft design and optimization applications, including aircraft conceptual design, and aircraft structural optimizations. Comparison between the different SC techniques is made, determining the best approach for the presented design optimization problems. Results demonstrate the potential benefits of SC techniques compared to the traditional methods when dealing with complex optimization problems. The developed architecture finds optimum designs with multiple numbers of constraints, handling with ease the full physical complexity of the proposed optimization problem involving continuous, integer and discrete variables. |
