Aerodynamic characteristics comparison between spiroid and blended winglets

الملخص EN

A numerical and experimentally investigation for two types of winglets (spiroid and blended), which are used to reduce the induced drag caused by the trailing vortices were presented and discussed in this work.

The SOLIDWORK 2016 was used to model a rectangular wing geometry of NACA2415 cross-sectional airfoil with blended and spiroid airfoils (2415 and 0012).

The steady, incompressible N.S equations with standard (k-ω) turbulence model were simulated and solved by ANSYS FLUENT 18.0 for turbulent flow.

The three-dimensional printer was used to manufacture the models in the experimental work.

The present work focused on the difference between two types of winglets of aircraft which are performed in a low-speed wind tunnel of 55m/s maximum speed and (0.7 m × 0.7 m × 1.5 m) rectangular test section.

The flow field and the aerodynamic characteristics of lift coefficient, drag coefficient, pitching and bending moment coefficient were investigated with lift to drag ratio for different angles of attack numerically and experimentally at Reynolds number of 3.72 x 105.

The results show that in general, the maximum lift to drag ratio for two winglet configurations for 6̊ angle of attack is 20% different for blended winglets as compared with spiroid winglets.

The results show that the blended winglet is more effective than spiroid winglet at low angles of attack, but for high angles the spiroid winglet is.