However, he acknowledged that the computational time required on existing hardware, nearly two weeks for a moderate improvement on an oversimplified proof of concept model, made it unattractive for commercial purposes.
In 2000, after a couple years of computer hardware development, K. Maute [2] introduced a more accurate system that could optimize an aircraft wing quickly enough for commercial use.
Once those are mapped out, the software flies the model in a simulated air tunnel using well-developed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) equations.
While the drag may have been reduced at cruising speed, it might have been drastically increased for take-off and landing, resulting in a net fuel loss for the airline.
Their initial findings saved a lot of money in building and testing – since it causes supersonic flow of air, a shock wave forms on the aft part of the wing, drastically increasing drag and reducing lift.
After modifying their goals to only keep the lift to drag ratio high and even out the pressure, the simulation provided a better design – showing that this tool is very adaptable to the situation at hand.
The end result of this study was that Airbus had a set of airfoil designs that are suited to a very large wing-body aircraft.
[6] This goal is different still – the Reno Air Race is a straight drag from one point to another at a relatively low altitude.
To accomplish this, the software was restricted to find a solution that could only distort the wing planform outwards, away from the control surfaces.
The interruptions of air flow at that particular speed travel back the right distance to break up the shock, reducing the drag.
If these modifications perform as expected, then this validates the use of the software tool to improve on an existing production wing without remanufacture.
[3] To account for additional conditions, such as take-off, landing, climbing, and cruising, the modeler calculates all of these simultaneously, rather than only one at a time.
The problem observed is that changes that boosted one point of interest directly conflicted with the other, and the resulting compromise severely hampers the improvement gained.