Parametric Study On Aerodynamic Performance Of Uav Winglet Design
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Date
2021-06-01
Authors
Harikumar, Haripresath
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
This work describes the aerodynamic performance of an aircraft model wing with RGV winglet. Ruppell’s Griffon Vulture (RGV), which is the highest-flying bird in the world, (with confirmed evidence of a flight at an altitude of 11,300 m (37,000 ft) above sea level) has been taken as the main consideration in designing for this research. The aerodynamic structure of the RGV wing and its wingtip is the main cause of its high-flying ability. Modifying wingtip is much easier and cheaper in aircraft industries compared to change of the whole wing. Thus, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study using ANSYS 2019 R3 is conducted to study the effect of the RGV winglet on a tapered wing with doubled number of splits. The wing consists of 660 mm span and 121 mm chord length where the aspect ratio is 5.45. The NACA 65(3)-218 aerofoil is used in this work. The tapered wing with different configuration of winglets have been designed using CATIA V5-R2020 software. The design
has been analyzed with Mach 0.06 [Reynolds Number = 1.7 𝑥 105] at various angle of
attacks (AOA) using unstructured triangular grids with the growing prism inflation. A 20- layer option has been implemented with first cell above the wall set at y is 0.1 mm. The turbulence model is based on Transition SST [4 eqn] with wall functions. A parametric study is done on aerodynamic performance such as lift coefficient [CL] and lift/drag ratio [CL]
/[CD] to get the best result of the RGV winglet design. The CFD result shows 18% increase in [CL] / [CD] ratio, 68% increase in lift coefficient and 32% reduction in drag coefficient by using an RGV winglet with doubled number of splits on a tapered wing.