Investigation of the electroactive morphing effects on an A320 prototype in subsonic regime at Reynolds number of 1 million
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The present article presents a new electroactive morphing concept studied by the IMFT and LAPLACE laboratories, able to drastically increase the aerodynamic performance. This concept, using a series of MFC (Macro-Fiber-Composite) piezoelectric actuators disposed along the trailing -edge area, as well as along specific rows in the region of 70% of the chord, has been investigated by High-Fidelity numerical simulations and refined physical experiments around the so-called “Reduced Scale” (RS) A320 wing prototype of 70 cm chord of the HORIZON-PATHFINDER Project N° 101129952 - BEALIVE - "Bioinspired Electroactive multiscale Aeronautical Live skin". The experiments and the simulations have been accomplished at 10° of incidence, Mach number of 0.06 and Reynolds number of 1 Million, corresponding to onset of take-off conditions. A specific emphasis has been attributed on the lift increase, drag reduction and on noise sources reduction by attenuation of harmful instabilities. The actuators motion and the slight deformation of the trailing-edge area has been numerically modelled by means of the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method with the CFD solver NSMB (Navier-Stokes Multi Block). Concerning the turbulence modelling, the Organised Eddy Simulation (OES) approach [1] has been employed. As demonstrated in our numerical and experimental studies, the Trailing-Edge (TE) vibration significantly increases the lift force in the order of 5%, while generation of Travelling Waves (TW) along the rear part of the suction side notably reduces drag by an order of 6%. These performances have been obtained through generation of smaller-scale vortices from the vibrations that interact with the existing coherent vortices in the shear layers (Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH)) and von Kármán (VK) vortices farther downstream, as well as with smaller chaotic turbulent vortices. The dynamic manipulation of these vortices produces an “eddy-blocking” effect, [5] that leads to a considerable thinning of the shear layers and of the wake’s width.
