Aerodynamic variable-fidelity surrogate model for conceptual aircraft design with UNICADO

In this contribution, a 1-D surrogate model of variable fidelity based on Gaussian process regression, applied to the aerodynamic analysis within the context of conceptual aircraft design is presented. For the low-fidelity aerodynamic analysis semi-empirical methods combined with a lifting line method are used. For the higher-fidelity analysis a RANS solver is used. Furthermore an adaptive sampling strategy based on prior knowledge from the aircraft design process is elaborated. The aerodynamic analysis is applied to the CeRAS short-range aircraft CSR-02. The impact of the enhanced aerodynamic analysis is investigated by simulated off-design missions comparing the estimated fuel burn with the low-fidelity aerodynamic analysis.