Application of Artificial Neural Networks in Nonlinear Aerodynamics and Aircraft Design

The architecture and training of artificial neural networks are briefly described. Five applications of these networks to design and analysis problems are presented; three in aerodynamics and two in flight dynamics. The aerodynamics cases are those of a harmonically oscillating airfoil, a pitching delta wing, and airfoil design. The flight dynamic examples involve control of a super maneuver and a decoupled control case. It is demonstrated that highly nonlinear aerodynamic cases can be generalized with sufficient accuracy for design purposes. It is shown that although neural networks generalize well on the aerodynamic problems, they appear lacking comparable robustness in modeling dynamic systems. It is also shown that generalization appears to become weak outside of the training domain.