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Article
Mission-Driven Inverse Design Of Blended Wing Body Aircraft With Machine Learning
Aerospace
  • Rohan S. Sharma
  • Serhat Hosder, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Abstract

The intent of this work was to investigate the feasibility of developing machine learning models for calculating values of airplane configuration design variables when provided time-series, mission-informed performance data. Shallow artificial neural networks were developed, trained, and tested using data pertaining to the blended wing body (BWB) class of aerospace vehicles. Configuration design parameters were varied using a Latin-hypercube sampling scheme. These data were used by a parametric-based BWB configuration generator to create unique BWBs. Performance for each configuration was obtained via a performance estimation tool. Training and testing of neural networks were conducted using a K-fold cross-validation scheme. A random forest approach was used to determine the values of predicted configuration design variables when evaluating neural network accuracy across a blended wing body vehicle survey. The results demonstrated the viability of leveraging neural networks in mission-dependent, inverse design of blended wing bodies. In particular, feed-forward, shallow neural network architectures yielded significantly better predictive accuracy than cascade-forward architectures. Furthermore, for both architectures, increasing the number of neurons in the hidden layer increased the prediction accuracy of configuration design variables by at least 80%.

Department(s)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Publication Status
Open Access
Keywords and Phrases
  • airplane design,
  • blended wing body,
  • design space,
  • inverse design,
  • mission profile,
  • neural networks,
  • performance analysis,
  • random forest
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2024 The Authors, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Publication Date
2-1-2024
Publication Date
01 Feb 2024
Citation Information
Rohan S. Sharma and Serhat Hosder. "Mission-Driven Inverse Design Of Blended Wing Body Aircraft With Machine Learning" Aerospace Vol. 11 Iss. 2 (2024) ISSN: 2226-4310
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/serhat-hosder/109/