Publications

A carbon fibre reinforced polymer is designed for NACA0012 airfoil wing using a finite element model to determine the stresses and deformation by considering the aerodynamic loads from wind tunnel testing. The composite airfoil is designed for the use in morphing wings which are known to increase the aerodynamic efficiency of unmanned aerial vehicles. This paper deals with the design procedures of modelling a composite wing using different design variables in conformance to the first order shear deformation theory using ANSYS® 19.2 and optimizing the design by using a fourth degree polynomial found by surface fitting and genetic algorithm in MATLAB® R2020a. The analysis is carried out on 125 samples consisting of different materials, orientation and thickness. The pressure loads found from the wind tunnel testing was converted using weighted average method and applied in ANSYS® 19.2. While designing the airfoil, monocoque concept is used for structural integrity and this is implemented by the usage of Styrene acrylonitrile at the leading and trailing edges which has high strength to weight ratio. The composite laminae with a certain orientation and thickness is found to have the lowest deformation of 158 nm in response to the aerodynamic load.

Numerical investigation on the aerodynamic characteristics of an optimised NACA0012 aerofoil in-ground effect (IGE) has been performed. Gradient-based shape optimisation was carried out using the ANSYS® 19.0 Adjoint Solver to augment lift over drag ratio (L/D) by at least 10%, at various heights and angles of attack. SST k-ω turbulence model was chosen for the simulations, after its validation for out-of-ground effect (OGE) and performing wind tunnel tests for IGE. While the desired target of 10% increase in the performance parameter was easily achieved through optimisation at low angles of attack (α < 6°), the frozen turbulence assumption in Adjoint Solver limited large shape alterations at higher angles of attack. Upper surface of the aerofoil had larger changes from original camber when compared to the lower surface. Also, the optimised profiles had significant modifications towards x/c ≥ 0.8. This signifies the suitability of trailing edge morphing for such applications.