An Introduction to Adjoint CFD Methods

Time- and resource-intensive CFD simulations are often a limiting factor in the industrial development and optimization process. The understanding of dependencies between optimization targets and parameters is of crucial importance in the design of complex configurations with many design parameters.The adjoint method allows a highly efficient CFD-based sensitivity analysis, which is important for the manual design process as well as for optimization algorithms. In many cases, sensitivity studies are thus a key factor in the time-driven design and optimization process. In recent years, adjoint CFD methods have increasingly found entry into industrial design and optimization applications.