Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
A CFD Analysis of a Morphing Wing for Aeronautic Applications
Submission Author:
Lucas Antunes , SP
Co-Authors:
Nicolas Guimarães Ono, Lucas Antunes, Giovanna Scala, Caio Ribeiro, Bruno Chieregatti
Presenter: Nicolas Guimarães Ono
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-0535
Abstract
As well know, the aircraft wings are the main reason that allows the plane to fly in many different conditions, but most times these conditions are sub-optimal. So, changing the camber in an airfoil is an effective way to increase the lift generated and potentially improve the aerodynamic efficiency, the lift-to-drag ratio. This can be achieved either using trailing edge flaps which create a sharp camber or using the Morphing Wing concept which appeared by the desire to fly in optimal conditions in a wide range of situations. Historically, morphing studies have shown penalties in terms of complexity, weight and cost. However, in some cases the aerodynamic benefits overcome these circumstances, especially nowadays that the current trend for efficient and sustainable aircraft rewrites the priorities, as new materials and production methods are discovered. Recently a new category of Morphing Wing was developed by researchers at the Swansea University, named Fishbone Active Camber (FishBAC). This article’s main objective is to analyze and compare the aerodynamic performance of airfoils that uses plain flaps with airfoils that use the FishBAC morphing concept, which create smooth and continuous changes in the geometry instead of the sudden change caused by the plain flaps mechanism that leads to performance drawbacks. The airfoil profile chosen to validate the approach in this study is the known Eppler 472 profile and then use the asymmetric Eppler 374 for further analysis. For the analysis and comparison of the aerodynamic performance, two different methods were used, a panel method code, XFOIL, applied in the XFLR5 software, against ANSYS-Fluent, a different finite volume solver and high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. Therefore, is possible to compare how both methods behave and compute the data for 2D analysis. The 2D tests consist of an arrangement of several configurations of morphing airfoils and airfoils with plain flaps, varying the angle of attack and the operating conditions, but taking into consideration that most planes use between 50 and 65 percent of the chord for fuel storage, due to long distances flights. Thereby, is possible to understand the impact of changing the start location of the morphing and the amount of chord deflected. The studies show a significant improvement in lift-to-drag ratios across a wide range of attack angles and configurations for morphing airfoils, due to the low drag penalty, when compared to the same lift coefficient value for flapped airfoils.
Keywords
morphing wing, camber, airfoil, Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), FishBAC
