AERODYNAMIC FORCE AND FLOW STRUCTURES OF TWO AIRFOILS IN FLAPPING MOTIONS

Aerodynamic force and flow structures of two airfoils in a tandem configuration in flapping motions axe studied, by solving the Navier-Stokes equations in moving overset grids. Three typical phase differences between the fore- and aft-airfoil flapping cycles are considered. It is shown that: (1) in the case of no interaction (single airfoil), the time average of the vertical force coefficient over the downstroke is 2.74, which is about 3 times as large as the maximum steady-state lift coefficient of a dragonfly wing; the time average of the horizontal force coefficient is 1.97, which is also large. The reasons for the large force coefficients are the acceleration at the beginning of a stroke, the delayed stall and the 'pitching-up' motion near the end of the stroke. (2) In the cases of two-airfoils, the time-variations of the force and moment coefficients on each airfoil are broadly similar to that of the single airfoil in that the vertical force is mainly produced in downstroke and the horizontal force in upstroke, but very large differences exist due to the interaction. (3) For in-phase stroking, the major differences caused by the interaction are that the vertical force on FA in downstroke is increased and the horizontal force on FA in upstroke decreased. As a result, the magnitude of the resultant force is almost unchanged but it inclines less forward. (4) For counter stroking, the major differences are that the vertical force on AA in downstroke and the horizontal force on FA in upstroke are decreased. As a result, the magnitude of the resultant force is decreased by about 20 percent but its direction is almost unchanged. (5) For 90 degrees -phase-difference stroking, the major differences axe that the vertical force on AA in downstroke and the horizontal force on FA in upstroke axe decreased greatly and the horizontal force on AA in upstroke increased. As a result, the magnitude of the resultant force is decreased by about 28% and it inclines more forward. (6) Among the three cases of phase angles, inphase flapping produces the largest vertical force (also the largest resultant force); the 90 degrees -phase-difference flapping results in the largest horizontal force, but the smallest resultant force.

Effect of Cambering on the Aerodynamic Performance of Heaving Airfoils

In the present work,a parametric numerical study is conducted in order to assess the effect of airfoil cambering on the aerodynamic performance of rigid heaving airfoils.The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved in their velocity-pressure formulation using a second-order accurate in space and time finite-difference scheme.To tackle the problem of moving boundaries,the governing equations are solved on overlapping structured grids.The numerical simulations are performed at a Reynolds number of Re=1100 and at different values of Strouhal number and reduced frequency.The results obtained show that the airfoil cambering geometric parameter has a strong influence on the average lift coefficient,while it has a smaller impact on the average thrust coefficient and propulsive efficiency of heaving airfoils.

Numerical analysis of the s1020 airfoils in tandem under different flapping configurations

The objective of this project is to improve the performance of the efficiency, thrust and lift of flapping wings in tandem arrangement. This research investigates the effect of the arrangement of the airfoils in tandem on the performance of the airfoils by varying the phase difference and distance between the airfoils. Three flapping configurations from an earlier phase of a research which gives high efficiency, thrust and lift are used in the tandem simulation. It is found all the different flapping configurations show improvement in the efficiency, thrust or lift when the distance between the two airfoils and the phase angle between the heaving positions of the two airfoils are optimal. The average thrust coefficient of the tandem arrangement managed to attain more than twice that of the single one （4.84 vs. 2.05）. On the other hand, the average lift coefficient of the tandem arrangement also increased to 4.59, as compared to the original single airfoil value of 3.04. All these results obtained will aid in the design of a better ornithopter with tandem wing arrangement.

Bi-objective path optimization of flapping airfoils based on a surrogate model

A bi-objective optimization problem for flapping airfoils is solved to maximize the time-averaged thrust coefficient and the propulsive efficiency. Design variables include the plunging amplitude, the pitching amplitude and the phase shift angle. A well defined Kriging model is used to substitute the time-consuming high fidelity model, and a multi-objective genetic algorithm is employed as the search algorithm. The optimization results show that the propulsive efficiency can be improved by reducing the plunging amplitude and the phase shift angle in a proper way. The results of global sensitivity analysis using the Sobol’s method show that both of the time-averaged thrust coefficient and the propulsive efficiency are most sensitive to the plunging amplitude, and second most sensitive to the pitching amplitude. It is also observed that the phase shift angle has an un-negligible influence on the propulsive efficiency, and has little effect on the time-averaged thrust coefficient.

Analysis of non-symmetrical flapping airfoils

Simulations have been done to assess the lift, thrust and propulsive efficiency of different types of non-symmetrical airfoils under different flapping configurations. The variables involved are reduced frequency, Strouhal number, pitch amplitude and phase angle. In order to analyze the variables more efficiently, the design of experiments using the response surface methodology is applied. Results show that both the variables and shape of the airfoil have a profound effect on the lift, thrust, and efficiency. By using non- symmetrical airfoils, average lift coefficient as high as 2.23 can be obtained. The average thrust coefficient and efficiency also reach high values of 2.53 and 0.61, respectively. The lift production is highly dependent on the airfoil＇s shape while thrust production is influenced more heavily by the variables. Efficiency falls somewhere in between. Two-factor interac- tions are found to exist among the variables. This shows that it is not sufficient to analyze each variable individually. Vorticity diagrams are analyzed to explain the results obtained. Overall, the S1020 airfoil is able to provide relatively good efficiency and at the same time generate high thrust and lift force. These results aid in the design of a better ornithopter＇s wing.

A general model for trailing edge serrations simulation on wind turbine airfoils

Trailing edge serrations(TESs)are capable of noticeably suppressing the turbulent trailing edge noise induced by rotating wind turbine blades and become an integral part of a blade.However,the challenges involved in the dimensional design of serration height 2 h,wavelengthλand flap angleϕare yet to be dealt with in a satisfactory manner.To address the problem,a general model for simulating the effects of serrations on the hydrodynamic and aeroacoustic performance is proposed due to its ease of use and relatively low requirements for user input.The solid serrations are replicated by momentum sources calculated by its aerodynamic forces.Then,a case relevant to wind turbine airfoil is examined,a hybrid improved delay detached eddy simulation(IDDES)method coupled with FW-H integration is deployed to obtain the flow features and far-field sound pressure level.It is found that the modeling method could reproduce the flow field and noise as serrated airfoil.

Aerodynamic and Acoustic Optimization for Multi-element Airfoils

The paper is to integrate aerodynamic and aero-acoustic optimizatiom design of high lift devices,especially for two-element airfoils with slat.Aerodynamic analysis on flow field utilizes a high-order,high-resolution spatial differential method for large eddy simulation(LES),which can guarantee accuracy and efficiency.The aeroacoustic analysis for noise level is calculated with Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings(FW-H)integration formula.Fidelity of calculation is verified by standard models.Method of streamline-based Euler simulation(MSES)is used to obtain the aerodynamic characters.Based on the confirmation of numerical methods,detailed research has been conducted for the leading edge slat on multi-element airfoils.Various slot parameter influences on noise are analyzed.The results of the slot optimization parameters can be used in multi-element airfoil design.

Design optimization of unsteady airfoils with continuous adjoint method

In this paper, a new unsteady aerodynamic design method is presented based on the Navier-Stokes equations and a continuous adjoint approach. A basic framework of time-accurate unsteady airfoil optimization which adopts time-averaged aerodynamic coefficients as objective functions is presented. The time-accurate continuous adjoint equation and its boundary conditions are derived. The flow field and the adjoint equation are simulated numerically by the finite volume method （FVM）. Feasibility and accuracy of the approach are perfectly validated by the design optimization results of the plunging NACA0012 airfoil.

HYBRID CARTESIAN GRID/GRIDLESS METHOD FOR CALCULATING VISCOUS FLOWS OVER MULTI-ELEMENT AIRFOILS

A hybrid Cartesian grid/gridless method is developed for calculating viscous flows over multi-element airfoils.The method adopts an unstructured Cartesian grid to cover most areas of the computational domain and leaves only small region adjacent to the aerodynamic bodies to be filled with the cloud of points used in the gridless methods,which results in a better combination of the computational efficiency of the Cartesian grid and the flexibility of the gridless method in handling complex geometries.The clouds of points in the local gridless region are implemented in an anisotropic way according to the features of the thin boundary layer of the viscous flows over the airfoils,and the clouds of points at the vicinity of the interface between the grid and the gridless regions are also controlled by using an adaptive refinement technique during the generation of the unstructured Cartesian grid.An implementation of the resulting hybrid method is presented for solving two-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes(NS)equations.The simulations of the viscous flows over a RAE2822airfoil or a two-element airfoil are successfully carried out,and the obtained results agree well with the available experimental data.

Variable-Domain Variational Finite Element Solution of I_A Inverse Problem of 2-D Unsteady Compressible Flow around Oscillating Airfoils

In this paper, on the basis of the variational principles developed the finite element method (FEM) is employed for numerical solution of the inverse pro blem of 2 D unsteady compressible flow around oscillating airfoils by incorporating the non reflecting far field boundary conditions and a new unsteady Kutta condition. All unknown boundary (airfoil contour) and discontinuities(shocks and free trailing vortex sheets) are determined via the functional variation with variable domain and artificial density concept. For the numerical realization of the variable domain variation, a special finite element with self adjusting nodes is also suggested herein. The numerical results show that the present method is effective for the design of unsteady airfoil.

Numerical Investigation of the Effects of Wind Tunnel Model Vibrations on the Measured Aerodynamic Properties of Airfoils and Wings

This paper presents a numerical prediction of the unsteady flow field around oscillating airfoils at high angles of attack by solving unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with SST turbulence model in order to simulate the effects of wind tunnel model vibrations on the aerodynamic properties of airfoils,especially high-aspect-ratio wings in a wind tunnel.The effects of the phase lagging between different modes of oscillations,i.e.,the airfoil plunging oscillation mode,the pitching oscillation mode,and the forward-backward oscillation mode,are also studied.It is shown that the vibrations (oscillations) of airfoils can cause the unsteady shedding of large-size separated vortex to precede the stationary stall incidence,hence lead to a stall onset at some earlier (lower) incidence than that in the steady sense.The different phase lagging has different effect on the flow field.When the pitching oscillation mode has small phase lagging behind the plunging oscillation mode,the effect of vibrations is large.Besides,if the amplitude of the oscillations is large enough,and the different modes of vibrations match or combine appropriately,the unsteady stall may occur 2° earlier in angle of attack than the case where airfoils keep stationary.

Unsteady Double Wake Model for the Simulation of Stalled Airfoils

In the present work, the recent developed Unsteady Double Wake Model, USDWM, is used to simulate separated flows past a wind turbine airfoil at high angles of attack. The solver is basically an unsteady two-dimensional panel method which uses the unsteady double wake technique to model flow separation and its dynamics. In this paper, the calculated integral forces have been successfully validated against wind tunnel measurements for the FFA-W3-211 airfoil. Furthermore, the computed highly unsteady flow field is analyzed in detail for a set of angles of attack ranging from light to deep stall conditions.

Transfer learning from two-dimensional supercritical airfoils to three-dimensional transonic swept wings

Machine learning has been widely utilized in flow field modeling and aerodynamic optimization.However,most applications are limited to two-dimensional problems.The dimensionality and the cost per simulation of three-dimensional problems are so high that it is often too expensive to prepare sufficient samples.Therefore,transfer learning has become a promising approach to reuse well-trained two-dimensional models and greatly reduce the need for samples for threedimensional problems.This paper proposes to reuse the baseline models trained on supercritical airfoils to predict finite-span swept supercritical wings,where the simple swept theory is embedded to improve the prediction accuracy.Two baseline models are investigated:one is commonly referred to as the forward problem of predicting the pressure coefficient distribution based on the geometry,and the other is the inverse problem that predicts the geometry based on the pressure coefficient distribution.Two transfer learning strategies are compared for both baseline models.The transferred models are then tested on complete wings.The results show that transfer learning requires only approximately 500 wing samples to achieve good prediction accuracy on different wing planforms and different free stream conditions.Compared to the two baseline models,the transferred models reduce the prediction error by 60%and 80%,respectively.

Aerodynamic performance enhancement forflapping airfoils by co-flow jet

Introducing active flow control into the design of flapping wing is an effective way to enhance its aerodynamic performance.In this paper,a novel active flow control technology called Co-Flow Jet(CFJ)is applied to flapping airfoils.The effect of CFJ on aerodynamic performance of flapping airfoils at low Reynolds number is numerically investigated using Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes(URANS)simulation with Spalart-Allmaras(SA)turbulence model.Numerical methods are validated by a NACA6415-based CFJ airfoil case and a S809 pitching airfoil case.Then NACA6415 baseline airfoil and NACA6415-based CFJ airfoil with jet-off and jet-on are simulated in flapping motion,with Reynolds number 70,000 and reduced frequency 0.2.As a result,CFJ airfoils with jet-on generally have better lift and thrust characteristics than baseline airfoils and jet-off airfoil when Cμgreater than 0.04,which results from the CFJ effect of reducing flow separation by injecting high-energy fluid into boundary layer.Besides,typical kinematic and geometric parameters,including the reduced frequency and the positions of the suction and injection slot,are systematically studied to figure out their influence on aerodynamic performance of the CFJ airfoil.And a variable Cμjet control strategy is proposed to further improve effective propulsive efficiency.Compared with using constant Cμ,an increase of effective propulsive efficiency by22.6%has been achieved by using prescribed variable CμNACA6415-based CFJ airfoil at frequency 0.2.This study may provide some guidance to performance enhancement for Flapping wing Micro Air Vehicles(FMAV).

Propulsive Characteristics of Twin Oscillating Airfoils

The bionic propulsion can be used on the aerostat and other automatic vehicles. The general single oscillating tail fin can induce the yawing and whole airship rolling because of the lateral force and the gravity moment of heavier oscillating tail fin. The parallel twin oscillating tail fins by symmetrical swing mode can eliminate the lateral force and gravity moment through the symmetrical swing of the two tail fins. The propulsive characteristics of parallel twin fins have not been investigated up to now. In this paper, we investigated the propulsive characteristics and mechanism of parallel twin oscillating airfoils using consistent and symmetrical swing mode. By using the numerical calculation and analysis, the consistent swing mode may decrease the total propulsion efficiency. While, the symmetrical swing mode can improve the propulsion efficiency and reduce the lateral force and gravity moment. This mode can be used to propel the aerostat and automatic underwater vehicles efficiently.

Robust design of NLF airfoils

A robust optimization design approach of natural laminar airfoils is developed in this paper. First, the non-uniform rational B-splines （NURBS） free form deformation method based on NURBS basis function is introduced to the airfoil parameterization. Second, aerodynamic characteristics are evaluated by solving Navier-Stokes equations, and theγ-Reθt transition model coupling with shear-stress transport （SST） turbulent model is introduced to simulate boundary layer transition. A numerical simulation of transition flow around NLF0416 airfoil is conducted to test the code. The comparison between numerical simulation results and wind tunnel test data approves the validity and applicability of the present transition model. Third, the optimization system is set up, which uses the separated particle swarm optimization （SPSO） as search algorithm and combines the Kriging models as surrogate model during optimization. The system is applied to carry out robust design about the uncertainty of lift coefficient and Mach number for NASA NLF-0115 airfoil. The data of optimized airfoil aerodynamic characteristics indicates that the optimized airfoil can maintain laminar flow stably in an uncertain range and has a wider range of low drag.

Lift performance enhancement for flapping airfoils by considering surging motion

The flapping motion has a great impact on the aerodynamic performance of flapping wings. In this paper, a surging motion is added to an airfoil performing pitching-plunging combined motion to figure out how it influences the lift performance and flow pattern of flapping airfoils.Firstly, the numerical methods are validated by a NACA0012 airfoil pitching case and a NACA0012 airfoil plunging case. Then, the E377m airfoil which has typical geometric characteristics of the bird-like airfoil is selected as the calculation model to study how phase differences φ1 between surging motion and plunging motion affect the aerodynamic performance of flapping airfoils. The results show that the airfoil with surging motion has comprehensively better lift performance and thrust performance than the airfoil without surging motion when 15°< φ1< 90°. It is demonstrated that surging motion has a powerful ability to improve the aerodynamic performance of flapping airfoil by adjusting φ1. Finally, to further explore how flapping airfoil improves lift performance by considering surging motion, the flapping motions of E377m airfoil with the highest lift coefficient and lift efficiency are obtained through trajectory optimization. The surging motion is removed in the highest lift case and highest lift efficiency case respectively, and the mechanism that surging motion adjusts the aerodynamic force is analyzed in detail by comparing the vortex structure and kinematic parameters. The results of this paper help reveal the aerodynamic mechanism of bird flight and guide the design of Flapping wing Micro Air Vehicles(FMAV).

Airfoil friction drag reduction based on grid-type and super-dense array plasma actuators

To improve the cruise flight performance of aircraft, two new configurations of plasma actuators(grid-type and super-dense array) were investigated to reduce the turbulent skin friction drag of a low-speed airfoil. The induced jet characteristics of the two actuators in quiescent air were diagnosed with high-speed particle image velocimetry(PIV), and their drag reduction efficiencies were examined under different operating conditions in a wind tunnel. The results showed that the grid-type plasma actuator was capable of producing a wall-normal jet array(peak magnitude: 1.07 m/s) similar to that generated in a micro-blowing technique, while the superdense array plasma actuator created a wavy wall-parallel jet(magnitude: 0.94 m/s) due to the discrete spanwise electrostatic forces. Under a comparable electrical power consumption level,the super-dense array plasma actuator array significantly outperformed the grid-type configuration,reducing the total airfoil friction drag by approximately 22% at a free-stream velocity of 20 m/s.The magnitude of drag reduction was proportional to the dimensionless jet velocity ratio(r), and a threshold r = 0.014 existed under which little impact on airfoil drag could be discerned.

Influence of Flap Parameters on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Wind-Turbine Airfoil

A numerical method has been used to analyze the flow field related to a NACA 0015 airfoil with and without a flap and assess the influence of the flap height and angle on the surface pressure coefficient,lift coefficient,and drag coefficient.The numerical results demonstrate that the flap can effectively improve the lift coefficient of the airfoil;however,at small attack angles,its influence is significantly reduced.When the angle of attack exceeds the critical stall angle and the flap height is 1.5%of the chord length,the influence of the flap becomes very evident.As the flap height increases,the starting point of the separation vortex gradually moves forward and generates a larger wake vortex.Optimal aerodynamic characteristics are obtained for 1.5%(of the chord length)flap height and a 45°flap angle;in this case,the separation vortex is effectively reduced.

Thrust Optimization of Flapping Wing via Gradient Descent Technologies

The current work aims at employing a gradient descent algorithm for optimizing the thrust of a flapping wing. An in-house solver has been employed, along with mesh movement methodologies to capture the dynamics of flow around the airfoil. An efficient framework for implementing the coupled solver and optimization in a multicore environment has been implemented for the generation of optimized solutionsmaximizing thrust performance & computational speed.