A method to describe the complex contacting surfaces was propounded to update finite element(FE) model of high pressure spool in aero-engine.It was posed as the minimization of an error function defined in time domain.The minimization was performed by using a novel particle swarm optimization method based on adaptive cloud distributing model

which constituted the main contribution in this work.In this algorithm

when the solution was close to the minimum

the weights of particle distribution were at the top of the cloud model which can find the nearest minima accurately

and when this algorithm tended to be unstable

the weights were at the bottom of the cloud model

which lowered the chance to relapse into local optimization in the process of solution convergence.The method has been tested through a simulated function model and FE model of high pressure spool.The performance of the proposed adaptive algorithm is more effective than those of other related algorithm with which it is compared.