INTERPLANETARY MISSION DESIGN USING DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION

摘要

Global optimization methods have been increasingly under consideration for preliminary interplanetary mission design. One promising global method, Differential Evolution (DE), has been identified as being particularly well suited to high-thrust trajectory optimization. In order to improve the performance of DE for this application, the effect of the DE tuning parameters is investigated over a diverse group of trajectory optimization problems. The quality of solutions obtained with DE is found to be very sensitive to the selection of the routine's tuning parameters. A single set of tuning parameter values is found that results in the rapid global optimization of an array of typical ballistic interplanetary missions. The fine-tuned DE routine is implemented in a new tool, MDTOP (Mission - Direct Trajectory Optimization Program), and the results are characterized over four case studies.