Abstract
During the evolution of an airplane aerodynamic design, proper calculation methods and software tools should be utilized, which correspond to the airplane category and project development level. In case of light aircraft, the general trend is the application of analytical and semiempirical methods at the initial stages, combined with simplified - inviscid CFD computational models, and fairly complex viscous CFD analyses at higher design levels. At the present stage of light aviation development, it is assumed that the contemporary design tools for each of those steps should be appropriate enough, so that they actually verify and additionally fine-tune each other's results. This paper describes the calculation tools and methods applied during the aerodynamic analyses of a new light aircraft at different development stages, and compares the results obtained by them, with the aim to verify and support the above statement, considering light aircraft aerodynamic design.
Highlights
The Innovation Center of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Belgrade, has recently been involved in the development of a new light aircraft (NLA - see Fig. 1)
Within the design process of the NLA, the initial aerodynamic calculations have been performed by Datcom method [1], well known and recognized in aviation industry
Comparison of the results obtained by Datcom, vortex lattice method (VLM) and hybrid method, and viscous CFD have shown fair agreements for practical engineering purposes
Summary
The Innovation Center of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Belgrade, has recently been involved in the development of a new light aircraft (NLA - see Fig. 1). Based on the inviscid CFD concept, the VLM analyses can give results for lift and moment coefficients in their linear domains, and only lift-induced drag, for the entire airplane configuration (without and with flaps and control surfaces deflections). Datcom and VLM gave good agreements for lift and moment curves for the NLA. For better determination of the NLA's polar (lift-drag) curves, a hybrid method has been established, using parasite drag calculus from Datcom, and full-configuration induced drag from VLM. Comparison of the results obtained by Datcom, VLM and hybrid method, and viscous CFD have shown fair agreements for practical engineering purposes. Differences were observed at higher angles of attack, where viscous CFD generally gave slightly larger maximum lift coefficients and lower critical angles of attack, than values obtained by Datcom
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