Effect of surface blowing on aerodynamic characteristics of tubercled straight wing

Recent research proves that wings with leading-edge tubercles have the ability to perform efficiently in post-stall region over the conventional straight wing. Moreover, the conventional straight wing outperforms the tubercled wing at a pre-stall region which is quintessential. Even though tubercled wing offers great performance enhancement, because of the complexity of the flow, the trough region of the tubercled wing is more prone to flow separation. Henceforth, the present paper aims at surface blowing – an active flow control technique over the tubercled wing to enhance the aerodynamic efficiency by positively influencing its lift characteristics without causing any additional drag penalty. Flow parameters like blowing velocity ratios and the location of blowing were chosen to find the optimised configuration keeping the amplitude and frequency of the leading-edge tubercles constant as 0.12 c and 0.25 c respectively. Numerical investigations were carried out over the baseline tubercled wing and tubercled wing with surface blowing at various blowing jet velocity ratios 0.5, 1 and 2 over four different chordwise locations ranging from 0.3 c to 0.8 c.The results confirm that blowing at various x/c with different blowing velocity ratios performs better than the conventional tubercled wing. Comparatively, blowing velocity ratio 2 at 0.3 c shows peak performance of about 28% enhancement in the lift characteristics relative to the baseline model. Particularly, in the pre-stall region, 25–50% increase in aerodynamic efficiency is evident over the tubercled wing with surface blowing compared with the baseline case. Additionally,attempts were made to delineate the physical significance of the flow separation mechanism due to blowing by visualizing the streamline pattern.

Aerodynamic characteristics of unsymmetrical aerofoil at various turbulence intensities

A series of wind tunnel tests were performed to investigate the effect of turbulent inflows on the aerodynamic characteristics of the unsymmetrical airfoil at various turbulence intensities and Reynolds number. To assess the aerodynamic characteristics, surface pressure measurements were made over the unsymmetrical airfoil surface by using a simultaneous pressure scanner MPS4264 of Scanivalve make. Self-generated passive grids made of parallel arrays of round bars were placed at four different locations to generate various Turbulence Intensities(TI) in the wind tunnel. The location of the passive grid has been normalized in terms of considering the distance between the entry of the test section and the leading edge of the model. Based on the wind tunnel results, by comparing the baseline without grid low turbulence case TI = 0.51% with other turbulence generated cases like TI = 4.68%, 4.73%, 6.04% and 8.46% at different Reynolds number, it is found that the coefficient of lift increases with the increase in the turbulence intensity. Results also reveal that the flow featuring turbulence can effectively delay the stall characteristics of an airfoil by attaching the flow over the airfoil for an extended region. Additionally, attempts were made to understand the influence of turbulence on the aerodynamic hysteresis.

Aerodynamics of ducted re-entry vehicles

Ballistic parameter plays a major role in determining the re-entry trajectory.Lower ballistic coefficient offers an optimal re-entry,wherein the vehicle decelerates higher up in the atmosphere thereby decreasing the imposed aerothermal loads.The current computational study proposes an add-on,to the existing Orion-based re-entry vehicle:a duct circumventing the capsule from the shoulder to the base,to improve the aerocapture ability of the re-entry vehicle.The design cases are categorised based on a non-dimensional parameter termed the Annular Area Ratio(AAR).Dragand ballistic coefficient of the Ducted Re-entry Vehicles(DRVs)at various Mach numbers are evaluated and compared with those of the baseline model.The results show that the proposed design increases the drag for all the AARs considered in the subsonic regime.In the supersonic regime,ducted models of higher AAR are more promising with the increase in Mach number.DRVs also exhibit lower ballistic coefficients than their baseline counterparts.