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Trailing edge camber morphing and upper surface morphing of NACA 64(1)-612 airfoil

Trailing edge camber morphing and upper surface morphing of NACA 64(1)-612 airfoil

Date6th Dec 2023

Time04:00 PM

Venue Online meeting link: https://meet.google.com/itk-dnkh-xwa

PAST EVENT

Details

Wing morphing technology primarily deals with the concept of changing the wing shape of an aircraft using compliant structures to produce optimum flight performance at all flight phases. This can lead to efficient aircraft designs that can reduce the environmental impact and cost of aviation. The first part of the current work involves the design, fabrication and controlled testing of a double corrugated variable camber morphing wing that has a compliant trailing edge control surface. This design implements a tendon actuated double corrugated structure fitted with a novel compliant skin that ensures seamless morphing of ±10o about the baseline shape. Different camber morphed airfoil profiles are numerically obtained from a quasi-static aeroelastic solver that uses ABAQUS® as the structural solver and XFOIL as the aerodynamic solver. The numerically computed aerodynamic coefficients of these shapes show better lift-to-drag ratio than the ones corresponding to conventional hinge-based designs. Subsequently, a prototype of the double corrugated camb er morphing wing has been fabricated and subjected to functionality test, static load test and finally wind tunnel test. The second part of the work deals with the idea of morphing the upper surface of an airfoil starting from the leading edge up to 60% of chord length. A baseline NACA 64(1)-612 airfoil has been chosen and a multi-objective shape optimization problem has been solved for every angle of attack to arrive at upper surface profiles that produce minimum drag and maximum lift. The lift-to-drag ratio of these upper surface morphed profiles show an improvement of 6% to 30% depending on the angle of attack. The results also indicate that skin friction drag can be mitigated by delaying the laminar-to-turbulent boundary layer transition point on the upper surface using this approach. The results from these studies emphasize the potential of morphing airfoils in reducing drag and improving lift-to-drag ratio when compared to conventional control surfaces. This broadens the s cope of this technology to wind turbine blades, fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles, underwater vehicles, etc.

Speakers

Mr. Gautham Vigneswar P N (AM18D207)

Department of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering