B147 study on airfoil performance in gusts

• Main Author: Png, Yong Han
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Aeronautical engineering::Aerodynamics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/60909
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In recent years, with leaps in advancements of technology, the number of passengers travelling via air has been increasing at an exponential rate. This has led to an increased importance in ensuring the safety levels provided by aircrafts. In addition, superjumbos such as the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 747 have been introduced to ferry hundreds of passengers per journey. Despite there being new technologies and equipment developed recently to facilitate experimentations to test the behavior of aircrafts in the presence of strong wind gusts, a lack of information still persists. This lack of information stems from the fact that the wind tunnels developed are based mostly on more ‘ideal’ situations instead of ‘real-world’ situations where there can be sudden differences in wind speed and direction. Therefore, this project would further develop on the redesigning of the gust generator to create stronger wind gusts in the wind tunnels. The first objective of the project is to redesign the gust generator by adding two vertically mounted airfoils to it, bringing it to a total of six vertically mounted oscillating airfoils. The dimensions of the existing airfoils were also changed to reduce the torque required to rotate the airfoils in attempt to produce sinusoidal wind gusts in the wind tunnel. The second objective of this project is to conduct a parametric study to investigate the aerodynamic performance of the airfoils and compare the sensor equipment, between the force probe and the 5-hole probe to verify possible enhancement in obtaining experimental readings. The frequency of rotation, amplitude of rotation and distance of gust generator from the test piece/sensors downstream were varied for each of the sensor equipment. The results were then obtained and compared and would allow for future experimentation of the behavior of aircrafts in realistic unsteady flow conditions.