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An aerodynamic shape optimization algorithm is presented, which includes all aspects of the design process: parameterization, flow computation and optimization. The purpose of this paper is to show that the Class‐Shape‐Refinement‐Transformation method in combination with an Euler/adjoint solver provides an efficient and intuitive way of optimizing aircraft shapes.

The Class‐Shape‐Transformation method was used to parameterize the aircraft shape and the flow was computed using an in‐house Euler code. An adjoint solver implemented into the Euler code was used to compute the required gradients and a trust‐region reflective algorithm was employed to perform the actual optimization.

The results of two aerodynamic shape optimization test cases are presented. Both cases used a blended‐wing‐body reference geometry as their initial input. It was shown that using a two‐step approach, a considerable improvement of the lift‐to‐drag ratio in the order of 20‐30 per cent could be achieved. The work presented in this paper proves that the CSRT method is a very intuitive and effective way of parameterizating aircraft shapes. It was also shown that using an adjoint algorithm provides the computational efficiency necessary to perform true three‐dimensional shape optimization.

The novelty of the algorithm lies in the use of the Class‐Shape‐Refinement‐Transformation method for parameterization and its coupling to the Euler and adjoint codes.