Flow over an Aircraft Wing

Overview

Commercial airplanes are built after a long design process that involves numerous tests of different scale models of the final aircraft. This process helps identify the best design and reduces the overall cost of building the airplane. Wind tunnels are used to test flight conditions on scaled models of the full airplane or parts of it. Applying the concepts of flow similarity and using scaling rules, engineers can extrapolate the behavior and the performance of the full-scale aircraft using the results obtained during the wind tunnel tests. In this simulation example, a wind tunnel test of a scaled model of a mock-up airplane wing is performed.

Objectives

The objective of this simulation example is to analyze low-speed air flow corresponding to take-off and landing conditions over a mock-up aircraft wing in a wind tunnel test setup. Also, lift and drag generated by the wing will be calculated.

Setup

Results and Discussion

Let us now analyze the simulation and understand the physics of the model wing.