On the effect of active flow control on the meandering of a wing-tip vortex

This paper discusses wind tunnel test results aimed at advancing active flow control technology to increase the aerodynamic efficiency of an aircraft during take-off. A model of the outer section of a representative civil airliner wing was equipped with two-stage fluidic actuators between the slat edge and wing tip, where mechanical high-lift devices fail to integrate. The experiments were conducted at a nominal take-off Mach number of M = 0.2. At this incidence velocity, separation on the wing section, accompanied by increased drag, is triggered by the strong slat edge vortex at high angles of attack. On the basis of global force measurements and local static pressure data, the effect of pulsed blowing on the complex flow is evaluated, considering various momentum coefficients and spanwise distributions of the actuation effort. It is shown that through local intensification of forcing, a momentum coefficient of less than cμ = 0.6% suffices to offset the stall by 2.4°, increase the maximum lift by more than 10%, and reduce the drag by 37% compared to the uncontrolled flow.

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Numerical studies of active flow control on wing tip extension

Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology ◽

10.1108/aeat-01-2018-0053 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 91 (2) ◽

pp. 346-352

Author(s):

Petr Vrchota ◽

Ales Prachar ◽

Shia-Hui Peng ◽

Magnus Tormalm ◽

Peter Eliasson

Keyword(s):

Flow Control ◽

Mass Flow ◽

Flow Separation ◽

Physical Modeling ◽

Active Flow Control ◽

Leading Edge ◽

Content Type ◽

Tip Extension ◽

Active Flow ◽

Wing Tip

Purpose In the European project AFLoNext, active flow control (AFC) measures were adopted in the wing tip extension leading edge to suppress flow separation. It is expected that the designed wing tip extension may improve aerodynamic efficiency by about 2 per cent in terms of fuel consumption and emissions. As the leading edge of the wing tip is not protected with high-lift device, flow separation occurs earlier than over the inboard wing in the take-off/landing configuration. The aim of this study is the adoption of AFC to delay wing tip stall and to improve lift-to-drag ratio. Design/methodology/approach Several actuator locations and AFC strategies were tested with computational fluid dynamics. The first approach was “standard” one with physical modeling of the actuators, and the second one was focused on the volume forcing method. The actuators location and the forcing plane close to separation line of the reference configuration were chose to enhance the flow with steady and pulsed jet blowing. Dependence of the lift-to-drag benefit with respect to injected mass flow is investigated. Findings The mechanism of flow separation onset is identified as the interaction of slat-end and wing tip vortices. These vortices moving toward each other with increasing angle of attack (AoA) interact and cause the flow separation. AFC is applied to control the slat-end vortex and the inboard movement of the wing tip vortex to suppress their interaction. The separation onset has been postponed by about 2° of AoA; the value of ift-to-drag (L/D) was improved up to 22 per cent for the most beneficial cases. Practical implications The AFC using the steady or pulsed blowing (PB) was proved to be an effective tool for delaying the flow separation. Although better values of L/D have been reached using steady blowing, it is also shown that PB case with a duty cycle of 0.5 needs only one half of the mass flow. Originality/value Two approaches of different levels of complexity are studied and compared. The first is based on physical modeling of actuator cavities, while the second relies on volume forcing method which does not require detailed actuator modeling. Both approaches give consistent results.

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