Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Weather Adaptive Aerodynamics While most of the modern technologies are exposed to complex three-dimensional (3D) and unsteady weather systems their aerodynamics has been mainly studied in one dimensional or two dimensional, steady conditions in classical wind tunnels. In reality many of the objects exposed to flow interaction are exposed to a superposition of transient flows. It is therefore important to study the aerodynamic behaviour of generic profiled or bluff bodies (representative of aerial and terrestrial vehicles and buildings) and propose methods to adapt to complex weather systems. In the previous NSERC Discovery grants the applicant has studied: (i) how to produce in a laboratory environment 3D and unsteady transient and non-stationary wind systems such as tornadoes, downburst and gusts; (ii) how these wind systems interact with various bodies such as buildings, structures, energy devices, as well as topography and canopy. As a continuation of his past research, the present grant proposal aims to investigate how a variety of generic bodies can adapt and can be optimized under complex wind/weather systems. Both profiled and bluff bodies will be studied in gust flows (both horizontal and vertical) as well as in superposition of perpendicular flows (updrafts and downdrafts combined with boundary layer flows) using the WindEEE Dome at Western and under transient and turbulent conditions using the ACE climatic wind tunnel at Ontario Tech University. Weather aerodynamic adaptation strategies will be defined for profiled and bluff bodies. (i) For profiled bodies, novel morphing concepts (inspired by birds morphology) will be extended based on control strategies previously developed by the applicant. Using an active skin technology aerodynamic optimization will be researched. (ii) For bluff bodies, an active form change will be explored for several modular body and flow configurations. This will be done based on a form changing membrane concept with the aim to decrease or increase drag depending on the weather induced flow type. These concepts will be first tested through numerical simulations calibrated based on a set of initial base case experiments. Once a certain level of optimization is reached detailed experiments will be conducted in both WindEEE and ACE. Applications are aimed for optimizing aircraft wings, transport cargoes, drones or modular building systems. The research will result in training a diverse group of M.Sc and PhD students and postdoctoral fellows over a period of 5 years. This HQP personnel will impact research and development in the future transportation and infrastructure industries in Canada.