CORE: Conceptual Optimization of Rotorcraft Environment

Facilitates optimization and design space exploration in the conceptual design phase of rotorcraft.

CORE was written to facilitate optimization and design space exploration in the conceptual design phase or rotorcraft. The nature of the design problem for helicopters, and especially compound helicopters, which CORE also supports to an extent, requires tools for optimization and visualization of a multi-dimensional problem with many objectives and constraints. CORE employs built-in optimization for both global and local search using established algorithms, both non-deterministic and deterministic. To let the designer visually explore the design space, novel capabilities are also included that combine well-known techniques for visualizing multi- and hyper-dimensional design domains into a single matrix of linked plots that allows the visualization of the effect of multiple decision variables on many constraints and design objectives.

The architecture of the suite was designed such that it can be used in a generic, rather than ad hoc, manner, while still offering significant transparency and expandability to the user. The goal of the project was to create a software suite that not only facilitates iteration and optimization, but in the process of converging on a design point also gives the designer a truly good understanding of the design problem, the design space, and what requirements are driving the design.

The analysis methods are able to capture important phenomena at the flight envelope boundaries, such as retreating blade stall, reverse flow, and advancing blade critical Mach drag rise.

CORE was designed to be operable by an engineer familiar with Matlab but little or no knowledge of rotary wing aerodynamics and optimization algorithms. This means that when presented to final year undergraduate students (the primary audience for the tool), they should find it useful, clear, and not daunting as a tool to aid in sizing a conventional helicopter for an undergraduate-level design task.

A help file and a demo project are included to help you get started.

This submission was previously http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/32148-core-conceptual-optimization-of-rotorcraft-environment from 2011. It has been briefly tested on 2013a. No further development is planned.