Multidisciplinary design optimization

The University of Florida, the National Institute of Aerospace, and Virginia Tech collaborated to address noise reduction in large airliner design using multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). They found that small increase in wing area can reduce flap noise on approach with only a small penalty in take-off gross weight or fuel consumption. SGI and Ford improved the use of high performance computing for rapid visualization during MDO and stochastic Monte Carlo simulation for CAE model validation and robust design. The Air Force Laboratory, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, MSC Software, and Technosoft combined high-fidelity computational physics with rapid-reaction conceptual design to demonstrate an estimated 75% reduction in design cycle time.