Multipoint optimization on fuel efficiency in conceptual design of wide-body aircraft

Aircraft conceptual design optimizations that maximize the performance at a design condition (single-point) may result in designs with unsatisfying off-design performance. To further improve aircraft efficiency under actual flight operations, there is a need to consider multiple flight conditions (multipoint) in aircraft conceptual design and optimization. A new strategy for multipoint optimizations in aircraft conceptual design is proposed in this paper. A wide-body aircraft is taken as an example for both single-point and multipoint optimizations with the objective of maximizing the specific hourly productivity. Boeing 787-8 flight data was used in the multipoint optimization to reflect the true objective function. The results show that the optimal design from the multipoint optimization has a 7.72% total specific hourly productivity increase of entire flight missions compared with that of the baseline aircraft, while the increase in the total specific hourly productivity from the single-point optimal design is only 5.73%. The differences between the results of single-point and multipoint optimizations indicate that there is a good option to further improve aircraft efficiency by considering actual flight conditions in aircraft conceptual design and optimization. (C) 2017 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd.