Analysis of Asymmetric Aircraft Aerodynamics Due to an Experimental Wing Glove

Abstract

Aerodynamic computational fluid dynamics analysis of a wing glove attached to one wing of a business jet is presented and discussed. A wing glove placed on only one wing will produce asymmetric aerodynamic effects that will result in overall changes in the forces and moments acting on the aircraft. These changes, referred to as deltas, need to be determined and quantified to ensure that the wing glove does not have a significant effect on the aircraft flight characteristics. TRANAIR (Calmar Research Corporation, Cato, New York), a nonlinear full potential solver, and Star-CCM+ (CD-adapco, Melville, New York), a finite volume full Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics solver, are used to analyze a full aircraft with and without the glove at a variety of flight conditions, aircraft configurations, and angles of attack and sideslip. Changes in the aircraft lift, drag, and side force along with roll, pitch, and yaw are presented. Span lift and moment distributions are also presented for a more detailed look at the effects of the glove on the aircraft. Aerodynamic flow phenomena due to the addition of the glove are discussed. Results show that the glove produces only small changes in the aerodynamic forces and moments acting on the aircraft, most of which are insignificant.