Experimental and numerical analyses of the travelling waves electroactive morphing implemented on the high lift A320 wing flap system in the subsonic regime.

  • DELON, Xavier (ICUBE/IMFT)

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The studied A320 wing prototype is near full-scale (1:1) consists of two elements. First, the fixed wing section of 1.4 m and then, the high-lift flap with a chord of 1.0 m, yielding a total take-off chord of 2.70 m with a span of 2 m. In the analysed take-off configuration, the flap is deflected at 10°. This investigation is conducted within the framework of the European project HORIZON-2023-2027-PATHFINDER- Open Project N° 101129952-BEALIVE-"Bioinspired Electroactive multiscale Aeronautical Live skin", http://horizon-europe-bealive.eu/, aiming at the development of a morphing actuation system forming a “live-skin” in strategic regions of the lifting surfaces of an A320 wing, with the objective of improving aerodynamic performance. The airflow around an A320 wing is numerically investigated in a low-subsonic take-off regime at a Reynolds number of 2.25 million. The Large-Scale (LS) wing prototype is tested under subsonic conditions in the S1 wind tunnel at IMFT [1]. The live-skin actuation is implemented exclusively on the suction side of the flap which induces significant modifications in the averaged wall pressure coefficient (Cp) distribution along the whole configuration compared to the static case (Figure 1). These important modifications are induced by feedback effect naturally occurring in this type of flow, the morphing effect propagated upstream, with observable changes (suction increase) in Cp extending to the leading edge of the fixed wing section (Figure 2). In addition, a substantial alteration in pressure distribution was recorded on the lower (super-pressure) surface, confirming a global aerodynamic impact of the actuation. The experimental lift coefficient (C_L) showed an improvement of up to 8%, further validating the effectiveness of the live-skin strategy at full scale (Figure 2-3). Four key parameters are considered to model the “live-skin” actuation: wavelength (λ), frequency (f), amplitude (a), and the length and position of the actuation zone on the suction side (x_0/c, x_f/c), where c is the wing chord (Figure 5). The flow is computed using the Navier–Stokes Multi-Block (NSMB) solver [3], and mesh deformations induced by morphing are handled with the Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) method [4]. The first numerical simulation campaign is based on performances obtained from the parametric spectrum performed in the S1 wind tunnel at IMFT. The simulated domain is willingly different from the experimental one of S1, in order to q