Camber Continuous Trailing Edge Flap Research Articles

Numerical Study of Variable Camber Continuous Trailing Edge Flap at Off-Design Conditions

Numerical simulations are performed to study the outboard airfoil of advanced technology regional aircraft (ATRA) wings with five different variable camber continuous trailing edge flap (VCCTEF) configurations. The computational study aims to improve the aerodynamic efficiency of the airfoil under cruise conditions. The design of outboard airfoil complies with the hybrid laminar flow control design criteria. This work is unique in terms of analysis of the effects of VCCTEF on the ATRA wing’s outboard airfoil during the off-design condition. The Reynolds–Averaged Navier–Stokes equations coupled with the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model are employed to perform the simulations for the baseline case and VCCTEF configurations. The current computational study is performed at an altitude of 10 km with a cruise Mach number of 0.77 and a Reynolds number of 2.16 × 107. Amongst all five configurations of VCCTEF airfoils studied, a flap having a parabolic profile (VCCTEF 123) configuration shows the maximum airfoil efficiency and resulted in an increase of 6.3% as compared to the baseline airfoil.

Drag Characterization Study of Variable Camber Continuous Trailing Edge Flap

A Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) computational study was conducted to investigate the effect of various variable camber continuous trailing edge flap (VCCTEF) configurations on the lift and drag of a NASA generic transport model (GTM) wing section. Out of the five two-dimensional (2D) VCCTEF configurations considered with varying camber in the three-segment flap region, with a total deflection of 6 deg, the best stall performance was exhibited by the circular and parabolic arc camber flaps. Both circular and parabolic arc flaps give similar lift performance, with the circular arc yielding a higher lift coefficient and parabolic arc resulting in the lowest drag and hence the best L/D performance at design Cl. Analysis of results based on linear theory shows excellent agreement between computed and theoretical incremental lift.