Exergy-Based Design and Analysis for Optimization of Aerospace Components and Systems

The proposed effort builds on an existing multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) framework for high speed air vehicles to investigate the applicability of exergy-based optimization criteria to vehicle design. This will result in a multidisciplinary analysis and optimization process focused on the second-law assessment and improvement of aerospace vehicles, including the disciplines of Propulsion, Aerodynamics, and Trajectory (as well as Geometry). Building on an existing MDO process allows a relatively ambitious program to be accomplished during Phase I. The existing framework will be modified to allow calculation of exergy-based system figures of merit, and an optimization of a reference hypersonic vehicle will be performed using the new exergy based method as well as a conventional weight based optimization. The results of these applications will be used to identify strengths of exergy based methods for optimization of flight vehicles.