Overview
Flow separation on aircraft wings has been notoriously linked with loss of lift and extra drag. Furthermore, the recent development of larger, more efficient Ultra High Bypass Ratio (UHBR) engines requires slat cut backs at the juncture of the engine pylon, which significantly promotes separation at high angles of attack. WP1.5 of Clean Sky 2 (CS2) Large Passenger Aircraft (LPA) Programme has been dedicated to addressing this very issue by developing active flow control (AFC) strategies.
Among the various AFC techniques proposed in the literature, the pulsed jet actuator (PJA) control has been regarded as a particularly promising one as it suppression separation effectively and with much lower mass flow than the continuous blowing actuation. WINGPULSE is specifically designed to unlock the potential of the PJA technique by combining the expertise of UNOTT in wind tunnel experiments, high-fidelity simulations and control design and the cutting-edge infrastructure and expertise of large-scale flow control testing at ILOT. The overarching aim of WINGPULSE is to develop and demonstrate PJA concepts for flow separation control with efficiency beyond the state-of-the-art (reducing the net mass flow by a factor of 3-5. UNOTT and ILOT will bring together their respective expertise in Computational Fluid Dynamics, aerodynamics, high integrity wind tunnel testing and development of novel flow control actuation systems, including pulsed jet actuator systems, to deliver the two models that facilitate the flow control test programme for UHBR integration in Clean Sky LPA WP1.5.3.