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The viscous finite volume lambda formulation is presented. The suggested technique is apt to compute viscous flows with heat fluxes. The inviscid terms are evaluated by means of the non‐conservative, very accurate upwind methodology, known as the finite volume lambda formulation. The diffusive terms, on the contrary, are approximated by a central scheme. Both methods are characterized by a nominal second order accuracy in space. Efficiency is enhanced by means of a multigrid technique which directly combines each grid level with each stage of an explicit multistage time integration technique. A laminar viscous flow about a NACA 0012 airfoil and a turbulent one about a RAE 2822 airfoil have been computed as well as the two‐ and three‐dimensional turbulent flows inside the Stanitz elbow. The computed numerical results are in very good agreement with well assessed published numerical or experimental results. The suggested multigrid technique allows significant work reductions for laminar as well as for turbulent flow computations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an accurate and efficient technique for computing flow sensitivities by finite differences of perturbed flow fields. It relies on computing the perturbed flows on coarser grid levels only: to achieve the same fine-grid accuracy, the approximate value of the relative local truncation error between coarser and finest grids unperturbed flow fields, provided by a standard multigrid method, is added to the coarse grid equations. The gradient computation is introduced in a hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) that takes advantage of the presented method to accelerate the gradient-based search. An application to a classical transonic airfoil design is reported.

Genetic optimization algorithm hybridized with classical gradient-based search techniques; usage of fast and accurate gradient computation technique.

The new variant of the prolongation operator with weighting terms based on the volume of grid cells improves the accuracy of the MAFD method for turbulent viscous flows. The hybrid GA is capable to efficiently handle and compensate for the error that, although very limited, is present in the multigrid-aided finite-difference (MAFD) gradient evaluation method.

The proposed new variants of HGA, while outperforming the simple genetic algorithm, still require tuning and validation to further improve performance.

Significant speedup of CFD-based optimization loops.

Introduction of new multigrid prolongation operator that improves the accuracy of MAFD method for turbulent viscous flows. First application of MAFD evaluation of flow sensitivities within a hybrid optimization framework.