Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft

Civil aviation faces great challenges because of its robust projected future growth and potential adverse environmental effects. The classical Tube-And-Wing(TAW) configuration following the Cayley's design principles has been optimized to the architecture's limit, which can hardly satisfy the further requirements on green aviation. By past decades' investigations the BlendedWing-Body(BWB) concept has emerged as a potential solution, which can simultaneously fulfill metrics of noise, emission and fuel burn. The purpose of the present work is to analyze the developments of critical technologies for BWB conceptual design from a historical perspective of technology progress. It was found that the high aerodynamic efficiency of BWB aircraft can be well scaled by the mean aerodynamic chord and wetted aspect ratio, and should be realized with the trade-offs among stability and control and low-speed performance. The structure concepts of non-cylinder pressurized cabin are of high risks on weight prediction and weight penalty. A static stability criterion is recommended and further clear and adequate criteria are required by the evaluations of flying and handling qualities. The difficulties of propulsion and airframe integration are analyzed. The energy to revenue work ratios of well-developed BWB configurations are compared,which are 31.5% and 40% better than that of TAW, using state-of-art engine technology and future engine technology, respectively. Finally, further study aspects are advocated.     

Application of a PCA-DBN-based surrogate model to robust aerodynamic design optimization

An efficient method employing a Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-Deep Belief Network (DBN)-based surrogate model is developed for robust aerodynamic design optimization in this study. In order to reduce the number of design variables for aerodynamic optimizations, the PCA technique is implemented to the geometric parameters obtained by parameterization method. For the purpose of predicting aerodynamic parameters, the DBN model is established with the reduced design variables as input and the aerodynamic parameters as output, and it is trained using the k-step contrastive divergence algorithm. The established PCA-DBN-based surrogate model is validated through predicting lift-to-drag ratios of a set of airfoils, and the results indicate that the PCA-DBN-based surrogate model is reliable and obtains more accurate predictions than three other surrogate models. Then the efficient optimization method is established by embedding the PCA-DBN-based surrogate model into an improved Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) framework, and applied to the robust aerodynamic design optimizations of Natural Laminar Flow (NLF) airfoil and transonic wing. The optimization results indicate that the PCA-DBN-based surrogate model works very well as a prediction model in the robust optimization processes of both NLF airfoil and transonic wing. By employing the PCA-DBN-based surrogate model, the developed efficient method improves the optimization efficiency obviously.     

遗传算法在机翼气动优化设计中的应用

把最优化方法与机翼的气动力求解相结合,进行跨音速机翼的气动优化设计。采用最优化方法为遗传算法,机翼的气动力由三维欧拉方程的数值解来提供。与基准机翼相比较,优化设计的机翼其气动性能有较大幅度的提高,表明遗传算法在机翼优化设计中的可行性和有效性     

分析计算航天飞机气动系数的边界元局部方法

空间运载工具设计阶段为分析比较不同外形高超音速各流动领域的性能,广泛应用局部方法。在其原始形式下,形状函数计算繁复,并限于简单几何外形组成的轴对称体。用边界元局部方法进行形状函数计算,可免去原局部方法面积分的繁复和藉助表格的局限。对STS-1轨道飞行器外形进行计算得到丁形状函数,并根据实验数据确定领域系数。由此计算出飞行器的法向力、轴向力和俯仰力矩系数,计算结果与实验数据相符。     

尾缘锯齿结构对低压涡轮动静干涉噪声的影响

为满足现代航空发动机"更紧凑的级间距、更高的经济性和更低的噪声"的设计目标,低压涡轮轴向间距设计得越来越小.然而,较小的轴向间距将严重影响涡轮的气动性能及动静干涉噪声,这对流动及噪声控制方法提出了更高的要求与挑战.为此,采用大涡模拟结合FW-H方程研究了不同轴向间距情况下,上游静叶尾缘采用短、长锯齿结构时,一级低压涡轮...     

用Nocilla模型计算卫星气动力系数和热流密度分布

本文用Nocilla粒子-表面作用模型计算卫星在运行轨道中整体气动力系数和星体表面热流密度分布,文中列出了详细计算公式和一个算例。     

Influence of leading edge with real manufacturing error on aerodynamic performance of high subsonic compressor cascades

To investigate the influence of real leading-edge manufacturing error on aerodynamic performance of high subsonic compressor blades, a family of leading-edge manufacturing error data were obtained from measured compressor cascades. Considering the limited samples, the leading-edge angle and leading-edge radius distribution forms were evaluated by Shapiro-Wilk test and quantile–quantile plot. Their statistical characteristics provided can be introduced to later related researches. The parameterization design method B-spline and Bezier are adopted to create geometry models with manufacturing error based on leading-edge angle and leading-edge radius. The influence of real manufacturing error is quantified and analyzed by self-developed non-intrusive polynomial chaos and Sobol’ indices. The mechanism of leading-edge manufacturing error on aerodynamic performance is discussed. The results show that the total pressure loss coefficient is sensitive to the leading-edge manufacturing error compared with the static pressure ratio, especially at high incidence. Specifically, manufacturing error of the leading edge will influence the local flow acceleration and subsequently cause fluctuation of the downstream flow. The aerodynamic performance is sensitive to the manufacturing error of leading-edge radius at the design and negative incidences, while it is sensitive to the manufacturing error of leading-edge angle under the operation conditions with high incidences.     

Effects of wing flexibility on aerodynamic performance of an aircraft model

The low-speed wind tunnel experiment is carried out on a simplified aircraft model to explore the influence of wing flexibility on the aircraft aerodynamic performance. The investigation involves the measurements of force, membrane deformation and velocity field at Reynolds number of 5.4 × 10⁴–1.1 × 10⁵. In the lift curves, two peaks are observed. The first peak, corresponding to the stall, is sensitive to the wing flexibility much more than the second peak, which nearly keeps constant. For the optimal case, in comparison with the rigid wing model, the delayed stall of nearly 5° is achieved, and the relative lift increment is about 90%. It is revealed that the lift enhanced region corresponds to the larger deformation and stronger vibration, which leads to stronger flow mixing near the flexible wing surface. Thereby, the leading-edge separation is suppressed, and the aerodynamic performance is improved significantly. Furthermore, the effects of sweep angle and Reynolds number on the aerodynamic characteristics of flexible wing are also presented.     

Aerodynamic design of tractor propeller for high-performance distributed electric propulsion aircraft

Aiming to maximize the aerodynamic performance of the Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) aircraft, a hybrid design framework which focuses on the aerodynamic performance of the propeller/wing integration has been developed and validated numerically. Variable-fidelity modelling for propeller aerodynamics has been used to achieve computational efficiency with reasonable accuracy. By optimizing the aerodynamic loading distributions on the tractor propeller disk, the induced slipstream is redistributed into a form that is beneficial for the wing downstream, based on which the propeller blade geometry is generated through a rapid inversed design procedure. As compared with the Minimum Induced Loss (MIL) propeller at a specified thrust level, significant improvements of both the lift-to-drag ratio of the wing and the propeller/wing integrated aerodynamic efficiency is achieved, which shows great promise to deliver aerodynamic benefits for the wing within the propeller slipstream without any additional devices.