Freeform Deformation vs. B-Spline Representation in Inverse Airfoil Design

In this work FFD technique is compared to the classical parameterization technique using B-Spline curves by performing inverse airfoil design tests, with a Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm to serve as the optimizer. The criteria of the comparison between the two techniques are the achieved accuracy in the approximation of the reference pressure distribution and the convergence behavior of the optimization algorithm. Experiments are presented, comparing FFD to B-Spline techniques under the same flow conditions, for various numbers of design variables.