Aerodynamic Modeling

Abstract

Unconventional aircraft designs like blended wing bodies are a possible solution to achieve the ambitious economic and ecologic goals of future air transport systems to reduce the fuel consumption, CO2-emissions by 50% and the external noise by 4−−5dB. In previous project dealing with blended wing body configuration, like the EC funded projects VELA (2002-2005) and NACRE (2005-2008), the high need for active control and related expertise has been identified. Since flight control design and flight performance are strongly influenced by the aircraft aerodynamics, it is inevitable to have accurate aerodynamic predictions even in the preliminary design process. Due to the strong non-linear phenomena occurring on the blended wing body, results of acceptable accuracy can only be obtained by highfidelity simulations as opposed to simplified approaches e.g. empirical methods or linear aerodynamicmethods without corrections. This section summarizes the aerodynamic computations carried out in task 2.2 of ACFA 2020. The goal is to provide a database of steady and unsteady aerodynamic data for task 2.3 that can be used for the set-up of a reduced aerodynamic model (ROM) in the frequency domain of the flight dynamics and the aeroelasticity of the ACFA-BWB configuration, blended wing body aircraft. The data should cover the complete flight envelope, from low speed to cruise speed. At first the numerical methods used for the aerodynamic computations by the different partners, DLR-AE, FOI, NTUA, and TUM-AER, are explained with the focus on the fundamental concepts covering the flow physics.