Numerical simulation of trailed vortex alleviation through chipped wingtip shapes

Abstract

The shedding of strong vortices generated during take-off and landing poses serious hazards for the following aircraft. To circumvent the vortex wake hazard, a chipped wingtip shape was suggested, and a series of numerical simulations were conducted to verify the conceptual validity of such shape. Numerical simulation was performed by using the incompressible Navier-Stokes solver with the pressure-based semi-implicit method for pressure linked equations algorithm. The Reynolds stressmodel was employed to evaluatethe turbulence effects.The trailed vortices of the chipped wingtip shapes were found to be more dissipative than those of the baseline wingtip shape. The counter-rotating vortices produced by the chipped wingtip shape can weaken the primary wingtip vortex strength in the far field. Regardless of the slightly increasing the drag, the chipped wingtip shape can successfully mitigate the tangential velocity of the vortices. These types of wingtip shapes had various design parameters, such as the aspect ratio, spacing, and area of each chip. Systematic numerical simulations were conducted to evaluate the effect of these parameters. According to the parametric study results, the aspect ratio was sensitive to the increase in the drag coefficient, and the area was susceptible to the moment coefficient. Evidently, a trade-off relationship existed between the tangential velocity reduction and the drag increase.