Optimizing Airfoil Aerodynamic Characteristics by Using Proposed CSA-KJ Method

Featured Application The application of this work in the optimization design direction of large-scale wind turbine blade airfoils and can provide a technical reference for the optimization design of other aircraft airfoils. Combined with the cuckoo search algorithm (CSA) and the Kutta-Joukowski (KJ) theorem, a CSA-KJ optimization method was proposed to improve the airfoil aerodynamic characteristics in this work. The fourth-order constant-free polynomial function was employed to describe the airfoil profile. The KJ loop lift of the airfoil was taken as the objective function, and the CSA was applied to iteratively update this method, which was used to optimize the NACA4412 airfoil. The results demonstrate that the optimized effect of the CSA-KJ method on the lift-drag ratio becomes increasingly more significant with the increase of incoming wind speed, and it has the best performance at an angle of attack of 0 degrees. Compared with the NACA4412 airfoil, the average and the maximum lift-drag ratio coefficients of the CSA-KJ4412 airfoil have increased. Meanwhile, the pressure difference distribution is improved, and the aerodynamic characteristic is better. From this, it can be seen that the CSA-KJ method can provide an effective way to optimize the aerodynamic performance of other airfoils.