Response surface approach to aerodynamic optimization design of helicopter rotor blade

This paper describes a hovering rotor blade design through the suitable combination of flow analysis and optimization technique. It includes a parametric study concerned with the influence of design variables and different design conditions such as objective functions and constraints on the rotor performance. Navier-Stokes analysis is employed to compute the hovering rotor performance in subsonic and transonic operating conditions. Response surface method based on D-optimal 3-level factorial design and genetic algorithm are applied to obtain the optimum solution of a defined objective function including the penalty terms of constraints. The designs of the rotor airfoil geometry and the rotor tip shape are performed in subsonic and transonic conditions, and it is observed that the new rotor blades optimized by various objective functions and constraints have better aerodynamic characteristics than the baseline rotor blade. The influence of design variables and their mutual interactions on the rotor performance is also examined through the optimization process. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.