Investigation of Blocking Effect of Aviation High-Speed Towing Tank Based on CFD and EFD

Abstract

Taking the unpowered model of a seaplane as the object, the blocking effect of aviation high-speed tank was studied by experimental and numerical methods in this paper. Firstly, the experiment of air field and drag were carried out in the bottom and front of the trailer. The experimental results of air field showed that the blocking effect of the air field was obvious in the bottom of trailer, while ignored in the front of trailer. The results of drag experiment under two conditions showed significant difference at mid-high speed, which proved the influence of blocking effect was obviouse. RANS method and overset grid were adopted in numerical simulation, and the accuracy of numerical method adopted in this paper was verified by comparing computed results of the model in the bottom of trailer with the experimental results. The computed results of hydrodynamic performance of the seaplane in finite and infinite domain showed that the influnence of the blocking effect of water could be nearly ignored, but the influnence of the blocking effect of air field was dominated. Finally, the hydrodynamic performance of the seaplane under the trailers with different sizes of chassis were carried out. The computed results showed that within the certain range, the degree of blocking effect of air field increased with the increase of geometrical variables of trailer chassis, further, which reached the maximum and kept constant when the variables exceeded a certain value.