Shape Optimization of Free-form Functional surfaces using isogeometric Analysis and Physics-Informed Surrogate Models

Faculty Development Competitive Research Grants Program 2022-2024

This research proposal focuses on the development of computational tools and methods for optimizing the design of functional free-form surfaces, such as airfoils/hydrofoils, wings, blades, propellers and ship hulls, appearing in several important engineering applications.
We are mainly targeting to:
1. Extend/enhance our team-developed toolbox of IGA-enabled BEM solvers to tackle a wider range of flow simulation problems accurately and efficiently;
2. Reduce the dimension of the design space for shape optimization problems that still depend on relatively high number of parameters, and finally
3. Introduce physics-informed surrogate models (including physics-informed neural networks) for optimization cases which still bear a prohibitive computational cost.