Differential Evolutionary Algorithms for Airfoil Shape Design

The airfoil aerodynamic design (AAD) is a complex problem in aerodynamic engineering. Which seeks an airfoil shape that improves the lift-drag ratio. In this work it was considered the Parametric Section (PARSEC) method that is a linear combination of shape functions describing the airfoil shape.

Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) are efficient tools to solve complex problems. Traditionally, Genetic Algorithms (GA) based techniques was applied to AAD. This work proposes to apply a Differential Evolutionary Algorithm (DEA) where each solution (airfoil shape) is evaluated by the Xfoil simulator. Experiments show that DEA is a promissory technique that gets airfoil shapes with good lift-drag ratio when compared to GA solutions.