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Numerical Investigation of Trailing-Edge  Camber-Morphing

Numerical Investigation of Trailing-Edge Camber-Morphing

Date8th Aug 2023

Time10:00 AM

Venue Google Meet-meet.google.com/hgm-qmho-egf

PAST EVENT

Details

To perform optimally, the ability of the wing to change its shape smoothly during the flight
is termed morphing. Natural flyers, i.e., birds and insects, change their wing shapes during the
flight according to their need. The various morphing methods adopted by these natural flyers are
changing the camber or thickness of the airfoil (wing section), changing the plan-form area,
sweeping the wings, bending in a span-wise direction, twisting, etc. The main objective of the
camber morphing is to optimize aerodynamic efficiency and control effectiveness, thereby
improving aircraft performance in terms of lift, drag, and maneuverability. By altering the camber
shape in real-time, aircraft can adapt to varying flight conditions, such as take-off, cruising, and
landing, leading to increased overall efficiency and reduced fuel consumption. Besides numerous
benefits, multiple challenges are also associated with the camber morphing technique for airfoils.
The airfoil's smooth, flexible morphing skin has some limitations that need to be addressed. For
these types of skins, advanced Elastomeric Matrix Composites (EMC) is required that offer a
limited range of deformation and may not be able to adapt to all flight conditions optimally, thus
setting material limitations. The continuous deformation of the skin during flight can lead to
increased wear and tear. Also, repeated flexing can cause early fatigue and reduce the life span of
the flexible morphing skin. They are sensitive to environmental conditions such as temperature,
humidity, and exposure to UV radiation. There can be some alternatives to this flexible camber
morphing airfoil skin. An option is to use corrugated skin type on both the pressure and the suction
surfaces of the airfoil. Corrugation skin can provide more camber to the airfoil with better
expansion and compression abilities along the chord-wise direction and enhanced bending strength
(stiffness) in the span-wise direction, thus enabling it to withstand more loads and can also allow
designers to increase the length of the span for generating more lift. In this work, a numerical study
of hinged and smooth–camber-morphed trailing edge flaps and various types of Sinusoidally
corrugated skin for the camber-morphed trailing edge is conducted for the symmetric NACA 0012
airfoil and the low-drag asymmetric NACA 641-612 airfoils. The hinged, smooth morphed, and
corrugated morphed surfaces have their root at 70% of the chord, which is a typical value for the
position of the hinge in aircraft wings. The effectiveness of these flaps is studied here mainly for
a typical take-off condition of a passenger aircraft at a high Reynolds number for low subsonic

flow conditions for three typical trailing-edge deflection angles used during take-off. Reynolds-
Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations are performed using Menter's SST k-ω two-

3
equation turbulence model in ANSYS Fluent using a pressure-based solver. Preliminary results
show that the use of a corrugated skin results in higher lift generation than the hinged airfoil but
less than that produced by the smooth-skin cambered trailing edge. This is attributed to the larger
extent of flow separation observed in the former case compared to the smooth-morphed trailing
edge case, which results in loss of lift. Future work will look into the optimal design of a passive
slot in the airfoil that can help in removing the trailing-edge flow separation and provide improved
performance with the corrugated skin. Finally, three-dimensional aerodynamic studies will be
attempted for a simple rectangular wing planform with the optimal slotted camber-morphed airfoil
with a corrugated skin and compared with that of the conventional hinged-flap wing configuration.

Speakers

Mr. Ravi Kumar, AE20D006

Department of Aerospace Engineering