Use of CFD Techniques in the Preliminary Design of Upwind Sails

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Couser ◽  
Norm Deane

The results of the 1997 World Titles, held in Kingston, Canada, highlighted that there was considerable scope for improving the upwind performance of the international Mirror Class by making small adjustments, within the tolerances allowed by the class rule, to the sails and underwater foils. This paper describes some aspects of the Australian research and development programme in preparation for the 1999 World Titles to be held in South Africa in April. Computational methods, based on the vortex lattice method, have been used to provide direction and guidance for the on-the-water testing and trialing programme. The use of these theoretical tools has enabled a far wider range of sail, dagger board and rudder parameters to be investigated than would be possible using purely on-the-water testing. The usefulness of well-understood computational and numerical methods in sail and foil design has been demonstrated; it has also been shown that these tools are within the reach of relatively small budget research and development programmes. The proof of the pudding may be at the 1999 International Mirror Class World Titles ... (watch this space)

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Rosenberg ◽  
Anupam Sharma

This paper extends the prescribed-wake vortex lattice method (VLM) to perform aerodynamic analysis of dual-rotor wind turbines (DRWTs). A DRWT turbine consists of a large, primary rotor placed co-axially behind a smaller, secondary rotor. The additional vortex system introduced by the secondary rotor of a DRWT is modeled while taking into account the singularities that can occur when the trailing vortices from the secondary (upstream) rotor interact with the bound vortices of the main (downstream) rotor. Pseudo-steady assumption is invoked, and averaging over multiple relative rotor positions is performed to account for the primary and secondary rotors operating at different rotational velocities. The VLM solver is first validated against experiments and blade element momentum theory results for a conventional, single-rotor turbine. The solver is then verified for two DRWT designs against results from two computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods: (1) Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes CFD with an actuator disk representation of the turbine rotors and (2) large-eddy simulations with an actuator line model. Radial distributions of sectional torque force and angle of attack show reasonable agreement between the three methods. Results of parametric sweeps performed using VLM agree qualitatively with the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) CFD results demonstrating that the proposed VLM can be used to guide preliminary design of DRWTs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 304 ◽  
pp. 02006
Author(s):  
Hasier Goitia ◽  
Raúl Llamas

The stall behavior of an empennage is a crucial and conditioning factor for its design. Thus, the preliminary design of empennages requires a fast low-order method which reliably computes the stall behavior and which must be sensitive to the design parameters (taper, sweep, dihedral, airfoil, etc.). Handbook or semi-empirical methods typically have a narrow scope and low fidelity, so a more general and unbiased method is desired. This paper presents a nonlinear vortex lattice method (VLM) for the stall prediction of generic fuselage-empennage configurations which is able to compute complete aerodynamic polars up to and beyond stall. The method is a generalized form of the van Dam algorithm, which couples the potential VLM solution with 2.5D viscous data. A novel method for computing 2.5D polars from 2D polars is presented, which extends the traditional infinite swept wing theory to finite wings, relying minimally on empirical data. The method has been compared to CFD and WTT results, showing a satisfactory degree of accuracy for the preliminary design of empennages.


Author(s):  
Anh Tuan Nguyen ◽  
Jae-Hung Han

Motivated by extensive possible applications of flapping-wing micro-air vehicles (MAVs) to various different areas, there has been an increasing amount of research related to this issue. In the stage of preliminary studies, one of the most important tasks is to predict the aerodynamic forces generated by the flapping motion. Studying aerodynamics of insects is an efficient way to approach the preliminary design of flapping-wing MAVs. In this paper, a modified version of an Unsteady Vortex Lattice Method (UVLM) is developed to compute aerodynamic forces appearing in flapping-wing models. A hawkmoth-like wing with kinematics based on the real motion is used for the simulations in this paper.


AIAA Journal ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 1230-1233
Author(s):  
Paulo A. O. Soviero ◽  
Hugo B. Resende

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Sen Mao ◽  
Changchuan Xie ◽  
Lan Yang ◽  
Chao Yang

A morphing trailing-edge (TE) wing is an important morphing mode in aircraft design. In order to explore the static aeroelastic characteristics of a morphing TE wing, an efficient and feasible method for static aeroelastic analysis has been developed in this paper. A geometrically exact vortex lattice method (VLM) is applied to calculate the aerodynamic forces. Firstly, a typical model of a morphing TE wing is chosen and built which has an active morphing trailing edge driven by a piezoelectric patch. Then, the paper carries out the static aeroelastic analysis of the morphing TE wing and corresponding simulations were carried out. Finally, the analysis results are compared with those of a traditional wing with a rigid trailing edge using the traditional linearized VLM. The results indicate that the geometrically exact VLM can better describe the aerodynamic nonlinearity of a morphing TE wing in consideration of geometrical deformation in aeroelastic analysis. Moreover, out of consideration of the angle of attack, the deflection angle of the trailing edge, among others, the wing system does not show divergence but bifurcation. Consequently, the aeroelastic analysis method proposed in this paper is more applicable to the analysis and design of a morphing TE wing.


1988 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Rajeswari ◽  
H. N. V. Dutt

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