Optimal External Configuration Design of Missiles

The main area of emphasis in the work is to investigate the methods and technology for aerodynamic configuration sizing of missiles and to develop a software platform (EXCON) in MATLAB environment as a design tool which has an ability of optimizing the external configuration of missiles for a set of flight requirements. In this multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) process, the external geometry candidates are graded according to their flight performances to discover an optimum solution. All of the flight performance data are obtained by running a flight simulation which uses Missile DATCOM as the aerodynamic coefficient prediction software package. In order to solve the resulting multi-objective optimization problem with a set of constraint of linear and nonlinear nature, improved evolutionary methods are applied. Also, a case study, the reconfiguration problem of an anti-ship cruise missile, is presented to demonstrate the accuracy and feasibility of the conceptual design tool developed. The book is suitable for engineers who are involved in the system-level preliminary design of the cruise missiles or in rapid prototyping of aircrafts using advanced MDO techniques.