The influence of canard position on aerodynamic characteristics of aircraft in delaying stall conditions

Abstract

The improvement of the performance of fighter aircraft is always made by engineering the flow around the fuselage; one way is by the addition of a canard. The addition of a canard with delta configuration will bring about the appearance of a roll-up vortex, with a vortex core that has a speed higher than its free velocity, from the canard to the main wing. This vortex core, which keeps the flow above the main wing, remains streamlined and delays a stall, thus increasing the aircraft’s maneuverability. The interaction of the vortex core from the canard with the airflow over the main wing is strongly influenced by the canard position against the main wing. Investigations needed to be done to see the effectiveness of the flow interactions. A visualization method using a water tunnel gave the advantages of a detailed flow review due to the density and mass diffusion being greater than air, yielding a better visualization. However, this suffered from limitations in getting quantitative data in detail, so that there was a need for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques. The results of this study indicated the effectiveness of canard position on the flow interaction, having a good lift coefficient (Cl) for the canard position on the top and front side of the main wing, with the Cl increased by up to 5%–12.1%. While at a high angle of attack (AoA), the canard position that was closer or coincides with the wings was capable of delaying the stall to 5–10 deg of AoA.The original version of this article supplied to AIP Conference Proceedings contained errors in the affiliation addresses, an incomplete equation in equation 1 and incorrect information listed in reference 13. An updated version of this article was published on 29 November 2018.