Establishing a Joint Research-Industry MDO Benchmark Based on the DLR-F25 Aircraft Configuration

Despite being promoted as a crucial component in the advancement of future aircraft, MDO tools based on high-fidelity prediction capabilities have not yet achieved widespread industrial implementation in the aeronautics sector, even after two decades of rigorous research. Throughout this period, aircraft designers have faced numerous challenges, and addressing these has often revealed additional issues. A significant aspect of the academic culture surrounding MDO is its focus on achieving notable enhancements in design performance, frequently at the cost of overlooking critical design constraints, which are paramount for aircraft designers. This exposes two realms with similar interests, but few intersections. In light of this, the authors of this paper address the necessity of redirecting MDO research to better align with industry requirements, while challenging the current capabilities of MDO, available today, to automatically support the design process. To this end, a challenging benchmark case based on the next-generation high-aspect ratio wing DLR-F25 configuration is proposed, offering not only the necessary geometry and computational models but also a comprehensive outline of the design task. This includes global and local design constraints that are typically neglected in MDO research studies, yet crucial in the daily work of aircraft designers. The authors, collaborating across aeronautical research and industry sectors, identified four key optimization tasks. These include an aerodynamic optimization task, a structural design task, a comprehensive multidisciplinary optimization task, and a robust design task applicable to any of the three mentioned primary challenges. This initiative serves as a foundational step, paving the way for more intricate definitions of optimization tasks to be released in the future, which will gradually involve a greater level of complexity.