Aerodynamic Design of an HLFC Wing for a Long-Range Transport Aircraft
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To achieve the environmental targets defined in Flightpath 2050, significant reductions in fuel consumption and emissions are required. In this context, aerodynamic design plays a central role by reducing drag and improving fuel efficiency. Among various concepts, delaying the laminar–turbulent transition offers substantial drag reduction potential. For long-range transport aircraft, Hybrid Laminar Flow Control (HLFC), combining natural-laminar-flow airfoil design with active boundary-layer suction, represents a viable solution. The present work focuses on the numerical aerodynamic design and analysis of a long-range passenger aircraft to be equipped with an HLFC system within the German LuFo project MUVE. The reference configuration is based on the fully-turbulent high-aspect-ratio wing developed in the INTELWI project. The design point corresponds to cruise conditions at Mach 0.83, lift coefficient of 0.5, Reynolds number 4.7 × 10⁷, and an altitude of h = 10668 m. HLFC application is restricted to the outer wing section, for both upper and lower surfaces, using leading-edge suction panels combined with tailored airfoil modifications. Airfoil geometries and suction distributions are optimized at selected spanwise stations using the in-house 2.75D HLFC design tool conFLOW, while preserving the baseline wing planform and target spanwise lift distribution. conFLOW employs a Bayesian optimization framework with integrated transition prediction to minimize drag under geometric and aerodynamic constraints. By coupling a 2.75D flow solver based on a conical flow approach with boundary-layer and linear stability solvers, the tool captures viscous effects and dominant instability mechanisms at low computational cost, enabling efficient design-space exploration and rapid optimization convergence. The optimized airfoils are subsequently integrated into the wing geometry, and twist optimization is performed using coupled CFD–structural simulations with TAU and IFLS, a fluid–structure interaction environment developed at the Institute of Aircraft Design and Lightweight Structures, TU Braunschweig. The aerodynamic performance of the HLFC-equipped wing is evaluated and compared with that of the baseline configuration.
