High-performance supersonic missile inlet design using automated optimization

Abstract

A multilevel design strategy for supersonic missile inlet design is developed. The multilevel design strategy combines an efficient simple physical model analysis tool and a sophisticated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) Navier-Stokes analysis tool. The efficient simple analysis tool is incorporated into the optimization loop, and the sophisticated CFD analysis tool is used to verify, select, and filter the final design. The genetic algorithms and multistart gradient line search optimizers are used to search the nonsmooth design space. A geometry model for the supersonic missile inlet is developed. A supersonic missile inlet that starts at Mach 2.6 and cruises at Mach 4 was designed. Significant improvement of the inlet total pressure recovery has been obtained. Detailed flowfield analysis is also presented.