An adjoint‐based design methodology for CFD problems

A complete CFD design methodology is presented. The main components of this methodology are a general edge‐based compressible/incompressible flow solver; a continuous adjoint formulation for the gradient computations; a steepest descent technique for the change of design variables; evaluation of the gradient of the discretized flow equations with respect to mesh by finite differences; a CAD‐free pseudo‐shell surface parametrization, allowing every point on the surface to be optimized to be used as a design parameter; and a level type scheme for the movement of the interior points. Several examples are included to demonstrate the methodology developed.