scholarly journals Aerodynamic Analysis and Design of High-Performance Sails

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean P. Caraher ◽  
Garth V. Hobson ◽  
Max F. Platzer

High-performance sails, such as the ones used on the America Cup boats, require sails whose aerodynamic characteristics approach those of rigid wings, yet permit a reduction in sail area in high wind and sea conditions. To this end, two-cloth sails are coming into use. These sails are constructed out of an articulated forebody that is a truncated ellipse, the aft of which has sail tracks, or rollers, along the edges to accommodate the twin sails. As the sails on either side need to be of the same length, due to the requirement to sail on different tacks, the two cloth sections need to be of equal length. The requirement then is to have their clews separated and able to slide over each other. More importantly, the transition between the rigid mast section and sails needs to be as aerodynamically smooth as possible in order to reduce drag and hence maximize the lift to drag ratio of the airfoil section that is made up of the mast and twin sails. A computational analysis using ANSYS CFX is presented in this chapter which shows that the aerodynamic characteristics of this type of two-cloth sail are almost as good as those of two-element rigid wing sections. Optimum sail trim configurations are analyzed in order to maximize the thrust production. Applications may soon extend beyond competitive sailing purposes for use on sailing ships equipped with hydrokinetic turbines to produce hydrogen via electrolysis (energy ships). Additionally, high performance sails can be used onboard cargo ships to reduce overall fuel consumption.

2012 ◽  
Vol 271-272 ◽  
pp. 791-796
Author(s):  
Xin Hua ◽  
Wei Shao ◽  
Chun Hua Zhang ◽  
Zhi Qiang Zhang

Wing aircraft is one of the major components to generate lift, in today's energy shortage, design the high lift-to-drag ratio wing is the goal pursued by, The author in the exploration of bionic airfoil aerodynamic characteristics on the basis of, which will be applied to straight wing design so as to improve the aerodynamic performance of aircraft.Our research mainly includes two aspects: first, the use of imitation seagull airfoil and NACA4412 airfoil are designed into the straight wing. The use of FLUENT software in Re=300000condition carries on the numerical simulation results show that the ratio of gull wing airfoil than NACA4412 lift coefficient increased by 13%, while the lift to drag ratio,is improved by 46.83%. Then, using the similarity principle, the wing scale, was tested in a wind tunnel test, the results obtained with the simulation are consistent. Airfoil design for the design of high performance wing opened a new way.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
K. Dhileep ◽  
D. Kumar ◽  
P.N. Gautham Vigneswar ◽  
P. Soni ◽  
S. Ghosh ◽  
...  

Abstract Camber morphing is an effective way to control the lift generated by any aerofoil and potentially improve the range (as measured by the lift-to-drag ratio) and endurance (as measured by $C_l^{3/2}/C_d$ ). This can be especially useful for fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) undergoing different flying manoeuvres and flight phases. This work investigates the aerodynamic characteristics of the NACA0012 aerofoil morphed using a Single Corrugated Variable-Camber (SCVC) morphing approach. Structural analysis and morphed shapes are obtained based on small-deformation beam theory using chain calculations and validated using finite-element software. The aerofoil is then reconstructed from the camber line using a Radial Basis Function (RBF)-based interpolation method (J.H.S. Fincham and M.I. Friswell, “Aerodynamic optimisation of a camber morphing aerofoil,” Aerosp. Sci. Technol., 2015). The aerodynamic analysis is done by employing two different finite-volume solvers (OpenFOAM and ANSYS-Fluent) and a panel method code (XFoil). Results reveal that the aerodynamic coefficients predicted by the two finite-volume solvers using a fully turbulent flow assumption are similar but differ from those predicted by XFoil. The aerodynamic efficiency and endurance factor of morphed aerofoils indicate that morphing is beneficial at moderate to high lift requirements. Further, the optimal morphing angle increases with an increase in the required lift. Finally, it is observed for a fixed angle-of-attack that an optimum morphing angle exists for which the aerodynamic efficiency becomes maximum.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Xiaohua Zou ◽  
Mingsheng Ling ◽  
Wenzheng Zhai

With the development of flight technology, the need for stable aerodynamic and vibration performance of the aircraft in the civil and military fields has gradually increased. In this case, the requirements for aerodynamic and vibration characteristics of the aircraft have also been strengthened. The existing four-rotor aircraft carries limited airborne equipment and payload, while the current eight-rotor aircraft adopts a plane layout. The size of the propeller is generally fixed, including the load capacity. The upper and lower tower layout analyzed in this paper can effectively solve the problems of insufficient four-axis load and unstable aerodynamic and vibration performance of the existing eight-axis aircraft. This paper takes the miniature octorotor as the research object and studies the aerodynamic characteristics of the miniature octorotor at different low Reynolds numbers, different air pressures and thicknesses, and the lift coefficient and lift-to-drag ratio, as well as the vibration under different elastic moduli and air pressure characteristics. The research algorithm adopted in this paper is the numerical method of fluid-solid cohesion and the control equation of flow field analysis. The research results show that, with the increase in the Reynolds number within a certain range, the aerodynamic characteristics of the miniature octorotor gradually become better. When the elastic modulus is 2.5 E, the aircraft’s specific performance is that the lift increases, the critical angle of attack increases, the drag decreases, the lift-to-drag ratio increases significantly, and the angle of attack decreases. However, the transition position of the flow around the airfoil surface is getting closer to the leading edge, and its state is more likely to transition from laminar flow to turbulent flow. When the unidirectional carbon fiber-reinforced thickness is 0.2 mm and the thin arc-shaped airfoil with the convex structure has a uniform thickness of 2.5% and a uniform curvature of 4.5%, the aerodynamic and vibration characteristics of the octorotor aircraft are most beneficial to flight.


Author(s):  
Yasumasa Watanabe ◽  
Kojiro Suzuki ◽  
Ethirajan Rathakrishnan

Breathing blunt nose technique is one of the promising methods for reducing the drag of blunt-nosed body at hypersonic speeds. The air, traversed by the bow shock positioned ahead of the nose, at the stagnation region is allowed to enter through a hole at the blunt-nose and ejected at the rear part (base region) of the body. This manipulation reduces the positive pressure over the stagnation regions of the nose and increases the pressure at the base, resulting in reduced suction at the base. The simultaneous manifestation of reducing the compression at the nose and suction at the base regions results in reduction of the total drag. The drag reduction caused by the breathing blunt nose technique has been measured in a Mach 7 tunnel. Also, the drag and flow field around the blunt-nosed body, with and without breathing hole, has been computed. The aerodynamic characteristics of the breathing blunt nose model obtained experimentally are compared with the CFD results. It is found that the breathing results in 5% reduction in drag. The lift coefficient also comes down for the model with breathing nose. But the lift-to-drag ratio is found to be the same for both the cases; the blunt-nosed body with and without nose-hole.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015.68 (0) ◽  
pp. 167-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takahiro MAKIZONO ◽  
Gaku SASAKI ◽  
Hiroshi OCHI ◽  
Takaaki MATSUMOTO ◽  
Koichi YONEMOTO

2017 ◽  
Vol 89 (6) ◽  
pp. 797-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuzhao He ◽  
Jialing Le ◽  
Si Qin

Purpose Waverider has high lift to drag ratio and will be an idea aerodynamic configuration for hypersonic vehicles. But a structure permitting aerodynamic like waverider is still difficult to generate under airframe’s geometric constrains using traditional waverider design methods. And furthermore, traditional waverider’s aerodynamic compression ability cannot be easily adjusted to satisfy the inlet entrance requirements for hypersonic air-breathing vehicles. The purpose of this paper is to present a new method named osculating general curved cone (OCC) method aimed to improve the shortcomings of traditional waveriders. Design/methodology/approach A basic curved cone is, first, designed by the method of characteristics. Then the waverider’s inlet captured curve and front captured tube are defined in the waverider’s exit plane. Osculating planes are generated along the inlet captured curve and the designed curved cone is transformed to the osculating planes. Streamlines are traced in the transformed curved cone flow field. Combining all streamlines which have been obtained, OCC waverider’s compression surface is generated. Waverider’s upper surface uses the free stream surface. Findings It is found that OCC waverider has good volumetric characteristics and good flow compression abilities compared with the traditional osculating cone (OC) waverider. The volume of OCC waverider is 25 per cent larger than OC waverider at the same design condition. Furthermore, OCC waverider can compress incoming flow to required flow conditions with high total pressure recovery in the waverider’s exit plane. The flow uniformity in the waverider exit plane is quite well. Practical implications The analyzed results show that the OCC waverider can be a practical high performance airframe/forebody for hypersonic vehicles. Furthermore, this novel waverider design method can be used to design a structure permitting aerodynamic like waverider for a practical hypersonic vehicle. Originality/value The paper puts forward a novel waverider design method which can improve the waverider’s volumetric characteristics and compression abilities compared with the traditional waverider design methods. This novel design approach can extend the waverider’s applications for designing hypersonic vehicles.


2016 ◽  
Vol 120 (1231) ◽  
pp. 1337-1364 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Şugar Gabor ◽  
A. Koreanschi ◽  
R.M. Botez

ABSTRACTThe paper presents the results of the aerodynamic optimisation of an Unmanned Aerial System's wing using a morphing approach. The shape deformation of the wing is achieved by placing actuator lines at several positions along its span. For each flight condition, the optimal displacements are found by using a combination of the new Artificial Bee Colony algorithm and a classical gradient-based search routine. The wing aerodynamic characteristics are calculated with an efficient nonlinear lifting line method coupled with a two-dimensional viscous flow solver. The optimisations are performed at angles of attack below the maximum lift angle, with the aim of improving the Hydra Technologies UAS-S4 wing lift-to-drag ratio. Several configurations of the morphing wing are proposed, each with a different number of actuation lines, and the improvements obtained by these configurations are analysed and compared.


2014 ◽  
Vol 493 ◽  
pp. 123-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismoyo Haryanto ◽  
Tony Suryo Utomo ◽  
Nazaruddin Sinaga ◽  
Citra Asti Rosalia ◽  
Aditya Pratama Putra

.This paper deals with an alternative design method of airfoil for wind turbine blade for low wind speed based on combination of smart computing and numerical optimization. In this work, a simulation of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for determining the relation between airfoil geometry and its aerodynamic characteristics was conducted. First, several airfoil geometries were generated through transformation of complex variables (Joukowski transformation), and then lift and drag coefficients of each airfoil were determined using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics). In present study, the ANN training was conducted using airfoil geometry and its aerodynamic characteristics as input and output, respectively. Therefore, lift and drag coefficients can be directly determined only by giving the airfoil geometry without having to perform wind tunnel experiment or numerical computation. Moreover, the optimization was conducted to obtain an airfoil geometry which gives maximum lift to drag ratio (CL/CD) for specific Reynolds number. For this purpose Genetic Algorithm (GA) was applied as optimizer. The results were validated using commercial CFD and it can be shown that the result are satisfactory with error approximately of 6%.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Moses Oluwatosin Julius ◽  
Saheed Adewale Adio ◽  
Adam Olatunji Muritala ◽  
Oluwasanmi Alonge

The enormous loss of momentum leads to stall and adversely affects the aerodynamic performance of aeroplane wings which may lead to a disaster, more importantly, risking the safety of the aeroplane by putting lives of passengers on it in danger. Therefore, this paper focuses on the enhancement of aerodynamic characteristics of NACA 23012 through the mitigation of flow separation and delay of the stall at higher angles of attack by using suction for Reynolds number (Re) = 3.4 x 106 . Considering the different suction features such as suction width, suction position, and suction coefficient, the separation delay capability of a suction control is studied. Also, the lift to drag ratio and the impact of energy consumption variation during the control technique are used for estimating the control effects. The Reynolds Average Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are employed together with the Menter’s shear stress turbulent model. The result of this study revealed that the jet position just behind the separation point at 0.2 % of the chord length shows an outstanding control outcome on the separation and stall, thereby increasing the lift. The lift to drag ration increased proportionately when the suction jet coefficient was increased. At suction coefficient Cq = 0.00225, a 92.1% drag reduction and 72.7% lift enhancement is observed. Hence, the stall angle is moved beyond 21.5o from an initial angle of 16° and the more energy was saved at a high angle of attack.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Vera Stelzer ◽  
Lars Krenkel

BACKGROUND: Due to their corrugated profile, dragonfly wings have special aerodynamic characteristics during flying and gliding. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to create a realistic 3D model of a dragonfly wing captured with a high-resolution micro-CT. To represent geometry changes in span and chord length and their aerodynamic effects, numerical investigations are carried out at different wing positions. METHODS: The forewing of a Camacinia gigantea was captured using a micro-CT. After the wing was adapted an error-free 3D model resulted. The wing was cut every 5 mm and 2D numerical analyses were conducted in Fluent® 2020 R2 (ANSYS, Inc., Canonsburg, PA, USA). RESULTS: The highest lift coefficient, as well as the highest lift-to-drag ratio, resulted at 0 mm and an angle of attack (AOA) of 5∘. At AOAs of 10∘ or 15∘, the flow around the wing stalled and a Kármán vortex street behind the wing becomes visible. CONCLUSIONS: The velocity is higher on the upper side of the wing compared to the lower side. The pressure acts vice versa. Due to the recirculation zones that are formed in valleys of the corrugation pattern the wing resembles the form of an airfoil.


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