Numerical Simulation and Validation of the Aerodynamics of Static and Dynamic Spoilers

Abstract

Spoilers play a vital role in the flight control systems of modern transport aircraft. Due to their efficiency and fast deflection rates they are widely used to assist in roll control or for gust load alleviation purposes. Simulating the aerodynamic behavior of spoilers still is a challenging task as deflecting a spoiler always induces flow separation. The work presented in this paper therefore focused on extending the application range of DLR’s in-house flow solver TAU by verifying and validating it for spoiler applications. In a first step, the work focused on steady and unsteady simulations of static and dynamic spoiler deflections in the low-speed regime. It was shown that the chosen numerical approach is well-suited to reproduce the surface pressure distribution for static spoiler deflections of up to 50°. Above that, the simulated transient aerodynamic response was found to be in good agreement with experimental data for a variety of deflection times and deflection angles.