Aerodynamic sensitivity coefficients using the three-dimensional full potential equation

Abstract

The quasianalytical (QA) approach is applied to the three-dimensional full potential equation to compute wing aerodynamic sensitivity coefficients in the transonic regime. Symbolic manipulation is used and is crucial in reducing the effort associated with obtaining sensitivity equations, and the large sensitivity system is solved using sparse solver routines such as the iterative conjugate gradient method. The results obtained are almost identical to those obtained by the finite difference (FD) approach and indicate that obtaining the sensitivity derivatives using the QA approach is more efficient than computing the derivatives by the FD method, especially as the number of design variables increases. It is concluded that the QA method is an efficient and accurate approach for obtaining transonic aerodynamic sensitivity coefficients in three dimensions.