A comparison of the drag polar curves of wings using the fluid-structure interaction analyses

The paper shows preliminary results of aeroelastic analyses of two half-wing models, having curved and swept planform, carried out at the Aerospace Unit of the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering of Pisa University. For a wing with a curved planform, as demonstrated in previous papers regarding rigid models of wings, the wave drag effects are strongly reduced in the transonic flight conditions. In the paper some results obtained by using Star-CCM+® 6.04.14 and Abaqus® 6.11 in “co-simulation” are summarized: for this reason the present numerical comparison, between a curved wing and a swept wing, includes the effects of structure’s deformability (the wings have the same aspect ratio). The beneficial effects of the planform shape on drag polar curves are confirmed (for fixed values of Lift Coefficient (CL) the reduction of Drag Coefficient (CD) reaches 7%-10%). Moreover the curved planform configuration improves the wing’s aeroelastic behavior: as an example, adopting similar wing box metallic structures for the two half-wing models, for a fixed value of CL the reaction moments and stress values at the root of the curved wing are reduced by about 5%÷8% with respect the data obtained for the swept wing at the same flight conditions.