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A general numerical unsteady non-linear lifting line model for engineering aerodynamics studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2018

O. Sugar-Gabor
O. Sugar-Gabor*
Affiliation:
Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering, School of Computing, Science and Engineering, University of Salford, Salford, UK
*
O.Sugar-Gabor@salford.ac.uk
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Abstract

The lifting-line theory is widely used for obtaining aerodynamic performance results in various engineering fields, from aircraft conceptual design to wind-power generation. Many different models were proposed, each tailored for a specific purpose, thus having a rather narrow applicability range. This paper presents a general lifting-line model capable of accurately analysing a wide range of engineering problems involving lifting surfaces, both steady-state and unsteady cases. It can be used for lifting surface with sweep, dihedral, twisting and winglets and includes features such as non-linear viscous corrections, unsteady and quasi-steady force calculation, stable wake relaxation through fictitious time marching and wake stretching and dissipation. Possible applications include wing design for low-speed aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles, the study of high-frequency avian flapping flight or wind-turbine blade design and analysis. Several validation studies are performed, both steady-state and unsteady, the method showing good agreement with experimental data or numerical results obtained with more computationally expensive methods.

Keywords

Lifting-line modelunsteady lifting line2D-3D couplinglifting-surface aerodynamicsflapping winghorizontal-axis wind turbine
Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 122 , Issue 1254 , August 2018 , pp. 1199 - 1228
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 2018 

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