Adaptive sampling of pressure distribution features for the airfoil statistical analysis

Abstract: In the area of supercritical wing design, a variety of principles, laws and rules have been summarized by scholars who perform theoretical and experimental analyses. The applicability of these rules is usually restricted by the airfoil samples investigated. With the advance of computational fluid dynamics and computational intelligence, such work can be better conducted on computers. The present paper proposes an output space sampling method to generate airfoil samples that have specified pressure distributions or meet certain special requirements. The well-selected and distributed samples are then utilized for statistical studies to obtain more reliable or more universal aerodynamics rules that can be used as guidance in the process of supercritical airfoil design. The capabilities of the output space sampling method in regard to filling the space and exploring the boundaries are also improved. The output space sampling method is employed to generate supercritical airfoil samples with different requirements, allowing the relationships between the shock wave location and the drag divergence Mach number as well as the drag creep characteristic to be revealed.