No Arabic abstract
The transition of the vortex pattern and the lift generated by a heaving wing in a uniform flow was investigated numerically. Motivated by insects flight maneuverability, we studied the relationship between a temporal change in the heaving wing motion and the change in the global vortex pattern. At a Strouhal number that generates an asymmetric vortex pattern, we found that temporal angular frequency reduction causes inversion of both the global vortex pattern and the lift sign. The inversion is initiated by the transfer of the leading-edge vortex, which interferes with the vortex pattern generated at the trailing edge. Successful inversion is conditioned on the starting phase and the time interval of the frequency reduction. The details of the process during the transition are discussed.
We investigate the effect of wing twist flexibility on lift and efficiency of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle capable of liftoff. Wings used previously were chosen to be fully rigid due to modeling and fabrication constraints. However, biological wings are highly flexible and other micro air vehicles have successfully utilized flexible wing structures for specialized tasks. The goal of our study is to determine if dynamic twisting of flexible wings can increase overall aerodynamic lift and efficiency. A flexible twisting wing design was found to increase aerodynamic efficiency by 41.3%, translational lift production by 35.3%, and the effective lift coefficient by 63.7% compared to the rigid-wing design. These results exceed the predictions of quasi-steady blade element models, indicating the need for unsteady computational fluid dynamics simulations of twisted flapping wings.
We numerically examine the mechanisms that describe the shock-boundary layer interactions in transonic flow past an oscillating wing section. At moderate and high angles of incidence but low amplitudes of oscillation, shock induced flow separation or shock-stall is observed accompanied by shock reversal. Even though the power input to the airfoil by the viscous forces is three orders of magnitude lower than that due to the pressure forces on the airfoil, the boundary layer manipulates the shock location and shock motion and redistributes the power input to the airfoil by the pressure forces. The shock motion is reversed relative to that in an inviscid flow as the boundary layer cannot sustain an adverse pressure gradient posed by the shock, causing the shock to move upstream leading to an early separation. The shock motion shows a phase difference with reference to the airfoil motion and is a function of the frequency of the oscillation. At low angles of incidence, and low amplitudes of oscillation, the boundary layer changes the profile presented to the external flow, leads to a slower expansion of the flow resulting in an early shock, and a diffused shock-foot caused by the boundary layer.
Emerging commercial and academic tools are regularly being applied to the design of road and race cars, but there currently are no well-established benchmark cases to study the aerodynamics of race car wings in ground effect. In this paper we propose a new test case, with a relatively complex geometry, supported by the availability of CAD model and experimental results. We refer to the test case as the Imperial Front Wing, originally based on the front wing and endplate design of the McLaren 17D race car. A comparison of different resolutions of a high fidelity spectral/hp element simulation using under-resolved DNS/implicit LES approach with fourth and fifth polynomial order is presented. The results demonstrate good correlation to both the wall-bounded streaklines obtained by oil flow visualization and experimental PIV results, correctly predicting key characteristics of the time-averaged flow structures, namely intensity, contours and locations. This study highlights the resolution requirements in capturing salient flow features arising from this type of challenging geometry, providing an interesting test case for both traditional and emerging high-fidelity simulations.
In this video, effect of chordwise damage on a damselfly (American Rubyspot)s wings is investigated. High speed photogrammetry was used to collect the data of damselflies flight with intact and damaged wings along the wing chord. Different level of deterioration of flight performance can be observed. Further investigation will be on the dynamic and aerodynamic roles of each wing with and without damage.
Four well-resolved LESs of the turbulent boundary layers around a NACA4412 wing section, with Rec ranging from 100,000 to 1,000,000, were performed at 5 degree angle of attack. By comparing the turbulence statistics with those in ZPG TBLs at approximately matching Re_tau, we find that the effect of the adverse pressure gradient (APG) is more intense at lower Reynolds numbers. This indicates that at low Re the outer region of the TBL becomes more energized through the wall-normal convection associated to the APG. This is also reflected in the fact that the inner-scaled wall-normal velocity is larger on the suction side at lower Reynolds numbers. In particular, the wing cases at Rec = 200,000 and 400,000 exhibit wall-normal velocities 40% and 20% larger, respectively, than the case with Rec = 1,000,000. Consequently, the outer-region energizing mechanism associated to the APG is complementary to that present in high-Re TBLs.