Application of Active Flow Control Technique for Gust Load Alleviation

A new gust load alleviation technique is presented in this paper based on active flow control. Numerical studies are conducted to investigate the beneficial effects on the aerodynamic characteristics of the quasi “Global Hawk” airfoil using arrays of jets during the gust process. Based on unsteady Navier-Stokes equations, the grid-velocity method is introduced to simulate the gust influence, and dynamic response in vertical gust flow perturbation is investigated for the airfoil as well. An unsteady surface transpiration boundary condition is enforced over a user specified portion of the airfoil's surface to emulate the time dependent velocity boundary conditions. Firstly, after applying this method to simulate typical NACA0006 airfoil gust response to a step change in the angle of attack, it shows that the indicial responses of the airfoil make good agreement with the exact theoretical values and the calculated values in references. Furthermore, gust response characteristic for the quasi “Global Hawk” airfoil is analyzed. Five kinds of flow control techniques are introduced as steady blowing, steady suction, unsteady blowing, unsteady suction and synthetic jets. The physical analysis of the influence on the effects of gust load alleviation is proposed to provide some guidelines for practice. Numerical results have indicated that active flow control technique, as a new technology of gust load alleviation, can affect and suppress the fluid disturbances caused by gust so as to achieve the purpose of gust load alleviation.