Particle swarm approach in finding optimum aircraft configuration

The applicability of Particle-swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to an aircraft conceptual design was investigated. The PSO procedure was applied to short/medium range aircraft configuration, fully complaint with minimum direct operating cost (DOC)requirements. A missile profile was defined with design range of 2968 km to estimate block time, block fuel, and aircraft weight. Tweo different boundary condition such as reflecting wall and absorbing wall was tested by performing 25 optimization tasks starting from randomly generated swarms. It was observed that conceptual design created by reflecting wall technique offered better performance than objective function value. Result shows that the PSO algorithm has the capability to effectively evaluate design space and identify various design variables set of aircraft conceptual design.