Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The air transport industry is introducing more and more stringent certification requirements (such as flight into icing conditions) and/or performance enhancement targets (CO2 reductions). This project develops new aerodynamic models in the areas of aero-icing and transitional flows for complex 3D aircraft geometries that can be used by aircraft manufacturers to achieve their design goals.Environmental conditions can lead to formation of ice on the aircraft surfaces, leading to reduced performance that can affect security. Notably during flight into icing atmospheric conditions, the effects of Supercooled Large Droplets on the aircraft's high-lift aerodynamics must be determined. Simultaneously, high-speed laminar flow wings are seen as a possible means of reducing aircraft drag, but three-dimensional flow over swept wings can trigger physical mechanisms that are not apparent in their 2D counterparts (e.g. cross-flow transition from laminar to turbulent regimes). Transition plays an important role in extrapolating wing-tunnel results on high-lift (laminar bubbles) and high-speed (shock waves) flows to flight conditions. The research project thus proposes to develop an aero-icing suite with special care in robust 3D simulations over complex realistic high-lift geometries and 3D transitional turbulence models. Finally, low-fidelity models via a non-linear Vortex Lattice Method will be used to perform trade-offs between icing security margins and fuel reduction gains. Geometrical complexities of high-lift devices (slats or flaps) over complex geometries in icing conditions are treated via the use of unstructured grid techniques, whereas high-speed flows will be solved using the Chimera approach coupled to novel 3D mesh generation techniques on structured grids. This project will train HQP in these areas, as well as high performance computing and source code developments. The final deliverables will benefit the sponsor, Bombardier Aerospace, and the entire Canadian community as aero-icing and transitional flows have impacts on many sectors i.e. wind energy, transport of electricity, etc.