Section: Application Domains

Multidisciplinary optimization

A CFD program computes the flow around a shape, starting from a number of inputs that define the shape and other parameters. From this flow, it computes an optimization criterion, such as the lift of an aircraft. To optimize the criterion by a gradient descent, one needs the gradient of the output criterion with respect to all the inputs, and possibly additional gradients when there are constraints. The reverse mode of AD is a promising way to compute these gradients.