Presenter

Presenter: Evangelos Papoutsis-Kiachagias

The Adjoint Method for Aero/Hydrodynamic Optimisation in OpenFOAM

Abstract: The course covers theoretical and practical aspects of the continuous adjoint method for aero/hydrodynamic optimisation, in OpenFOAM. It starts by introducing the concept of aero/hydrodynamic optimisation in general and then focuses on the main idea behind gradient-based optimisation, assisted by the adjoint method to compute the gradient of the objective function with respect to the design variables of the optimisation problem. It continues with presenting  some indicative applications of adjoint methods (computation of sensitivity maps, shape and topology optimisation) and concludes with two hands-on examples on how to set up OpenFOAM cases for computing sensitivity maps and performing automated shape optimisation loops. The course will use the adjointOptimisationFoam executable and its accompanying libraries that can be found in the OpenFOAM version released through www.openfoam.com (e.g. OpenFOAM v2506), and was made publicly available by the presenters’ group.