Aerodynamic Analysis and Optimisation of a Servo-Controlled Aileron

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulllment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Engineering at the University of Cape Town

Student Supervisor

Chris Day Chris Redelinghuys

September 2011

Abstract

With fuel prices rising while economies crash, and damage to the environment due to CO2 emissions becoming ingrained in our global consciousness, the pressure for the airline industry to reduce its consumption of fuel is mounting. In a collaboration between a leading aircraft manufacturer and four South African universities, potentially more ecient technologies for aircraft roll control are being investigated. As purely manually-operated aircraft of a century ago became heavier, required stick forces for roll control were reduced using a counter-rotating tab to assist with aileron movement. With the availability of 21st century technology, it has been conjectured that smart materials could be employed to control the aileron deections via the tab. This would replace bulky hydraulics with an electrically-actuated system, contributing to the airliners continuous weight-loss programme. This dissertation involves the aerodynamic analysis component of the collaboration project. Aerodynamic analyses were undertaken in a number of available open source programs such as XFoil, a vortex element panel method with coupled integral-method boundary layer; TSFoil, a non-linear potential-ow solver using the transonic small disturbance equations; and using CFD with the SpalartAllmaras turbulence model. A range of congurations were tested using a doubleapped NACA 23012 airfoil, with aileron and tab deected 4 and -4 respectively, and varying the angle of attack and freestream Mach number. It was found that only solution of the full Navier-Stokes equations will give practically useful results for typical transonic cruise conditions. Optimisation of the airfoil geometry in terms of hinge locations as well as airfoil thickness and camber was performed using the principles of Modern Design of Experiments. PABLO, a vortex panel method, was used to generate responses for lift and hinge moment coecients, and results were compared using a fullfactorial analysis and an L81 orthogonal array. The reduced array was seen to give accurate results even with just 11% of the data points of the full array. A merit function was evaluated and results suggest that a thick, symmetric airfoil performs best, while xa should be moved forward and xt back, with the best performance found at high angles of attack. The applicability of the optimum found is limited by the inability of the panel method to accurately model transonic ow, but the analysis illustrates the usefulness of the ecient optimisation method when applied to a more computationally expensive analysis like CFD.