HIGH-LIFT BEHAVIOUR OF HALF-MODELS AT FLIGHT REYNOLDS NUMBERS

Abstract

A peniche is designed to offset a half-span aircraft model from the wind tunnel wall boundary layer. This strategy of model mounting results in large influence on the measured aerodynamic coefficients, compared with full-span data. The negative influence is especially important in high-lift conditions leading to incorrect maximum lift behaviour.

A very time-consuming set of python scripts was constructed to allow automatic meshing of the wing-body configuration of the DLR F11 high-lift model placed in the European Transonic Wind tunnel (ETW, Germany). Variations due to different concepts of model mountings (peniches) were included. A block-structured FLOWer solver (DLR, Germany) was used for all flow simulations, simplifying the mesh generation process by using the chimera overlapping grids technique.

Preliminary results are available for a full-span configuration obtained with a symmetry condition at the mirror plane. Computations of the half-span model placed directly at the wall or mounted using a standard peniche are also presented.