As far as I understand, wing twist is used by commercial wing designers to make the span-wise distribution of lift as elliptical as possible for tapered wings, increasing the span-efficiency factor and reducing induced drag as much as possible for a given planform dimension. Wing twist on swept wings is not new as discussed here for the A310. However, I was wondering whether wing twist distributions have changed as we have applied more powerful CFD methods to wing design (e.g., full potential methods with boundary layer coupling --> Euler methods --> Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes with Turbulence Model), thereby improving span efficiency factors beyond that which was possible in the late-1970s.
That is, would the 787/A380/A350 generation of aircraft have "more optimal" twist distributions in some way as compared to the A330/A340/777 generation and so on and so forth for prior generation of aircraft?
