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In view of the fact that dynamic stall models in the wind energy industry such as ONERA model, Beddoes–Leishman model, and Snel model are mostly semi‐empirical models, and the determination of empirical time constants has a great influence on the model accuracy. To optimize the time constant in dynamic stall model and improve the prediction accuracy of unsteady aerodynamics, the influence of boundary layer and pressure lag on the unsteady performance of the S809 airfoil under 2D flow conditions is explored using a simple semi‐empirical dynamic stall engineering model. The proposed model consists of four first‐order differential equations accounting for attached flow and dynamic separation flow of trailing edge based on the Theodorsen theory. A validation is carried out by the wind tunnel experiment in the Key Laboratory of Wind and Solar Energy Utilization Technology of the Ministry of Education at Inner Mongolia University of Technology. The main conclusions are as follows. The time constants for lag in pressure and boundary layer both have a great influence on the unsteady lift coefficient. When the mean angle of attack is relatively small and the airflow is between the attached flow and the separated flow, appropriately reducing the time constant can make the prediction results closer to the experimental values. When the mean angle of attack is relatively large and the airflow is in condition of fully separated flow, the time constant value can be appropriately increased. The influence of pressure lag and boundary layer lag on the unsteady drag coefficient is not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind and gusts can significantly impact the performance of rotors and turbines. The transient behavior of the rotor should be carefully examined to account for these effects. This paper investigates the unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of a rotor blade under different wind conditions, such as direction, speed, and angle. A 3D transient Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation using the dynamic mesh technique is performed to analyze the rotor dynamics. The unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) equations with the k-ω SST turbulence model are solved. The rotor blade used for this study is the U15XXL Combo KV29 industrial blade, which has not been numerically analyzed before. The results show that wind in the same direction as the rotation reduces the thrust more than lateral or opposite wind. Lateral wind with a speed lower than 5 m/s decreases the blade performance, but higher speeds increase it. Higher lateral wind speeds also cause two peaks in the torque curve, forming a butterfly wing shape in the polar torque plot and multiple extrema in the torque curve with increasing speed. The maximum thrust shifts slightly to the left with increasing lateral wind speed. The lateral angle does not affect the average thrust produced in one blade revolution but only causes a spatial shift. The thrust production decreases as the angle approaches the opposite direction of rotation. The motion amplitude decreases, and the curve becomes smoother as this angle increases. A nearly straight line similar to no side wind is observed at 60 and 90 degrees, which is attributed to the constant effective angle of attack during the rotation cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In view of the fact that dynamic stall models in the wind energy industry such as ONERA model, Beddoes–Leishman model, and Snel model are mostly semi‐empirical models, and the determination of empirical time constants has a great influence on the model accuracy. To optimize the time constant in dynamic stall model and improve the prediction accuracy of unsteady aerodynamics, the influence of boundary layer and pressure lag on the unsteady performance of the S809 airfoil under 2D flow conditions is explored using a simple semi‐empirical dynamic stall engineering model. The proposed model consists of four first‐order differential equations accounting for attached flow and dynamic separation flow of trailing edge based on the Theodorsen theory. A validation is carried out by the wind tunnel experiment in the Key Laboratory of Wind and Solar Energy Utilization Technology of the Ministry of Education at Inner Mongolia University of Technology. The main conclusions are as follows. The time constants for lag in pressure and boundary layer both have a great influence on the unsteady lift coefficient. When the mean angle of attack is relatively small and the airflow is between the attached flow and the separated flow, appropriately reducing the time constant can make the prediction results closer to the experimental values. When the mean angle of attack is relatively large and the airflow is in condition of fully separated flow, the time constant value can be appropriately increased. The influence of pressure lag and boundary layer lag on the unsteady drag coefficient is not significant.

Abstract Wind and gusts can significantly impact the performance of rotors and turbines. The transient behavior of the rotor should be carefully examined to account for these effects. This paper investigates the unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of a rotor blade under different wind conditions, such as direction, speed, and angle. A 3D transient Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation using the dynamic mesh technique is performed to analyze the rotor dynamics. The unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) equations with the k-ω SST turbulence model are solved. The rotor blade used for this study is the U15XXL Combo KV29 industrial blade, which has not been numerically analyzed before. The results show that wind in the same direction as the rotation reduces the thrust more than lateral or opposite wind. Lateral wind with a speed lower than 5 m/s decreases the blade performance, but higher speeds increase it. Higher lateral wind speeds also cause two peaks in the torque curve, forming a butterfly wing shape in the polar torque plot and multiple extrema in the torque curve with increasing speed. The maximum thrust shifts slightly to the left with increasing lateral wind speed. The lateral angle does not affect the average thrust produced in one blade revolution but only causes a spatial shift. The thrust production decreases as the angle approaches the opposite direction of rotation. The motion amplitude decreases, and the curve becomes smoother as this angle increases. A nearly straight line similar to no side wind is observed at 60 and 90 degrees, which is attributed to the constant effective angle of attack during the rotation cycle.

A low-order physics-based model to simulate the unsteady flow response to airfoils undergoing large-amplitude variations of the camber is presented in this paper. Potential-flow theory adapted for unsteady airfoils and numerical methods using discrete-vortex elements are combined to obtain rapid predictions of flow behavior and force evolution. To elude the inherent restriction of thin-airfoil theory to small flow disturbances, a time-varying chord line is proposed in this work over which to satisfy the appropriate boundary condition, enabling large deformations of the camber line to be modeled. Computational fluid dynamics simulations are performed to assess the accuracy of the low-order model for a wide range of dynamic trailing-edge flap deflections. By allowing the chord line to rotate with trailing-edge deflections, aerodynamic loads predictions are greatly enhanced as compared to the classical approach where the chord line is fixed. This is especially evident for large-amplitude deformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of optimally sparse Taylor partial derivatives presents a new opportunity in efficient nonlinear model reduction for complex aeroelastic systems. Unfortunately, for this class of reduced order model (ROM), the robustness that is observed in the linear regime to parameters including; dynamic pressure, control hinge linear stiffness, or even freeplay, can be quickly compromised in the nonlinear regime. In this paper, the nonlinear sensitivity of selected critical parameters is addressed by interpolating a library of nonlinear unsteady aerodynamic ROMs across a compact subspace in dynamic pressure and freeplay magnitude. The ROM, based on Lagrange interpolation of sparse higher-order Taylor partial derivatives, demonstrates excellent precision in modelling high amplitude transonic limit cycle oscillations for an all-movable wing with freeplay, capturing the LCO region (up to 96% of the linear flutter boundary), and for a range of freeplay values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deposition of combustion residues in the nozzle ring (NR) of a turbocharger turbine stage changes the NR geometry significantly in a random manner. The resultant complex and highly asymmetric geometry induces low engine order (LEO) excitation, which may lead to resonance excitation of rotor blades and high cycle fatigue (HCF) failure. Therefore, a suitable prediction workflow is of great importance for the design and validation phases. The prediction of LEO excitation is, however, computationally expensive as high-fidelity, full annulus CFD models are required. Previous investigations showed that a steady-state computational model consisting of the volute, the NR, and a radial extension is suitable to reduce the computational costs massively and to qualitatively predict the level of LEO forced response. In the current paper, the aerodynamic excitation of 69 real contaminated NRs is analyzed using this simplified approach. The results obtained by the simplified simulation model are used to select 13 contaminated NR geometries, which are then simulated with a model of the entire turbine stage, including the rotor, in a transient time-marching manner to provide high-fidelity simulation results for the verification of the simplified approach. Furthermore, two contamination patterns are analyzed in a more detailed manner regarding their aerodynamic excitation. It is found that the simplified model can be used to identify and classify contamination patterns that lead to high blade vibration amplitudes. In cases where transient effects occurring in the rotor alter the harmonic pressure field significantly, the ability of the simplified approach to predict the LEO excitation is not sufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsteady component interaction represents a crucial topic in turbomachinery design and analysis. Combustor/turbine interaction is one of the most widely studied topics both using experimental and numerical methods due to the risk of failure of high-pressure turbine blades by unexpected deviation of hot flow trajectory and local heat transfer characteristics. Compressor/combustor interaction is also of interest since it has been demonstrated that, under certain conditions, a non-uniform flow field feeds the primary zone of the combustor where the high-pressure compressor blade passing frequency can be clearly individuated. At the integral scale, the relative motion between vanes and blades in compressor and turbine stages governs the aerothermal performance of the gas turbine, especially in the presence of shocks. At the inertial scale, high turbulence levels generated in the combustion chamber govern wall heat transfer in the high-pressure turbine stage, and wakes generated by low-pressure turbine vanes interact with separation bubbles at low-Reynolds conditions by suppressing them. The necessity to correctly analyze these phenomena obliges the scientific community, the industry, and public funding bodies to cooperate and continuously build new test rigs equipped with highly accurate instrumentation to account for real machine effects. In computational fluid dynamics, researchers developed fast and reliable methods to analyze unsteady blade-row interaction in the case of uneven blade count conditions as well as component interaction by using different closures for turbulence in each domain using high-performance computing. This research effort results in countless publications that contribute to unveiling the actual behavior of turbomachinery flow. However, the great number of publications also results in fragmented information that risks being useless in a practical situation. Therefore, it is useful to collect the most relevant outcomes and derive general conclusions that may help the design of next-gen turbomachines. In fact, the necessity to meet the emission limits defined by the Paris agreement in 2015 obliges the turbomachinery community to consider revolutionary cycles in which component interaction plays a crucial role. In the present paper, the authors try to summarize almost 40 years of experimental and numerical research in the component interaction field, aiming at both providing a comprehensive overview and defining the most relevant conclusions obtained in this demanding research field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The objectives are to determine which quantities are important to measure to determine how drivers perceive vehicle stability, and to develop a regression model to predict which induced external disturbances drivers are able to feel. Background: Driver experience of a vehicle's dynamic performance is important to auto manufacturers. Test engineers and test drivers perform several on-road assessments to evaluate the vehicle's dynamic performance before sign-off for production. The presence of external disturbances such as aerodynamic forces and moments play a significant role in the overall vehicle assessment. As a result, it is important to understand the relation between the subjective experience of the drivers and these external disturbances acting on the vehicle. Method: A sequence of external yaw and roll moment disturbances of varying amplitudes and frequencies is added to a straight-line high-speed stability simulation test in a driving simulator. The tests are performed with both common and professional test drivers, and their evaluations to these external disturbances are recorded. The sampled data from these tests are used to generate the needed regression model. Results: A model is derived for predicting which disturbances drivers can feel. It quantifies difference in sensitivity between driver types and between yaw and roll disturbances. Conclusion: The model shows a relationship between steering input and driver sensitivity to external disturbances in a straight-line drive. Drivers are more sensitive to yaw disturbance than roll disturbance and increased steering input lowers sensitivity. Application: Identify the threshold above which unexpected disturbances such as aerodynamic excitations can potentially create unstable vehicle behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aircraft configurations with propellers have been drawing more attention in recent times, partly due to new propulsion concepts based on hydrogen fuel cells and electric motors. These configurations are prone to whirl flutter, which is an aeroelastic instability affecting airframes with elastically supported propellers. It commonly needs to be mitigated already during the design phase of such configurations, requiring, among other things, unsteady aerodynamic transfer functions for the propeller. However, no comprehensive assessment of unsteady propeller aerodynamics for aeroelastic analysis is available in the literature. This paper provides a detailed comparison of nine different low- to mid-fidelity aerodynamic methods, demonstrating their impact on linear, unsteady aerodynamics, as well as whirl flutter stability prediction. Quasi-steady and unsteady methods for blade lift with or without coupling to blade element momentum theory are evaluated and compared to mid-fidelity potential flow solvers (UPM and DUST) and classical, derivative-based methods. Time-domain identification of frequency-domain transfer functions for the unsteady propeller hub loads is used to compare the different methods. Predictions of the minimum required pylon stiffness for stability show good agreement among the mid-fidelity methods. The differences in the stability predictions for the low-fidelity methods are higher. Most methods studied yield a more unstable system than classical, derivative-based whirl flutter analysis, indicating that the use of more sophisticated aerodynamic modeling techniques might be required for accurate whirl flutter prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insects, birds, and bats that power and control flight by flapping their wings perform excellent flight stability and maneuverability by rapidly and continuously varying their wing motions. This article provides an overview of the state of the art of vortex-dominated, unsteady flapping aerodynamics from the viewpoint of diversity and uniformity associated with dominant vortices, particularly of the relevant physical aspects of the flight of insects and vertebrates in the low- and intermediate-Reynolds-number (Re) regime of 100 to 106. After briefly describing wing morphology and kinematics, we discuss the main vortices generated by flapping wings and the aerodynamic forces associated with these structures, focusing on leading-edge vortices (LEVs), wake vortices, and vortices generated by wing motions over a broad Re range. The LEVs are intensified by dynamic wing morphing in bird and bat flight, producing a significantly elevated vortex lift. The complex wake vortices are the footprints of lift generation; thus, the time-averaged vortex lift can be estimated from wake velocity data. Computational fluid dynamics modeling, quasi-steady models, and vortex lift models are useful tools to elucidate the intrinsic relationships between the lift and the dominant vortices in the near- and far-fields in flapping flight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major tasks of aerodynamics is the study of the flow around airfoils. While most conventional methods deal well with steady flows, unsteady airfoils, like the ones on helicopter blades, are subject to such complex dynamic flows that their study can impose substantial difficulties. However, recent applications of machine learning, in the form of neural networks, have shown very promising results when dealing with complex dynamic aerodynamic phenomena. For this reason, this paper proposes the implementation of a recurrent neural network for the time-wise prediction of the lift, momentum, and drag coefficients for an airfoil subject to plunging motion, using the R e , k, h, k h and the time history of the effective angle of attack as inputs. Results from early training already suggest the network's capability to approximate the desired outputs, even if with some limitations. However, the network configuration is flexible enough to be fed with either experimental or numerical data in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Odor-guided navigation is fundamental to the survival and reproductive success of many flying insects. Despite its biological importance, the mechanics of how insects sense and interpret odor plumes in the presence of complex flow fields remain poorly understood. This study employs numerical simulations to investigate the influence of turbulence, wingbeat-induced flow, and Schmidt number on the structure and perception of odor plumes by flying insects. Using an in-house computational fluid dynamics solver based on the immersed-boundary method, we solve the three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations to model the flow field. The solver is coupled with the equations of motion for passive flapping wings to emulate wingbeat-induced flow. The odor landscape is then determined by solving the odor advection–diffusion equation. By employing a synthetic isotropic turbulence generator, we introduce turbulence into the flow field to examine its impact on odor plume structures. Our findings reveal that both turbulence and wingbeat-induced flow substantially affect odor plume characteristics. Turbulence introduces fluctuations and perturbations in the plume, while wingbeat-induced flow draws the odorant closer to the insect's antennae. Moreover, we demonstrate that the Schmidt number, which affects odorant diffusivity, plays a significant role in odor detectability. Specifically, at high Schmidt numbers, larger fluctuations in odor sensitivity are observed, which may be exploited by insects to differentiate between various odorant volatiles emanating from the same source. This study provides new insights into the complex interplay between fluid dynamics and sensory biology and behavior, enhancing our understanding of how flying insects successfully navigate using olfactory cues in turbulent environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To research serious nonlinear coupling problems among aerodynamics, flight mechanics, and flight control during high maneuvers, a virtual flight testing platform has been developed for a large-scale, high-speed wind tunnel, based on the real physical environment, and it can significantly mitigate risks and reduce the costs of subsequent flight tests. The platform of virtual flight testing is composed of three-degrees-of-freedom model support, measuring devices for aerodynamic and motion parameters, a virtual flight control system, and a test model. It provides the ability to realistically simulate real maneuvers, investigate the coupling characteristics of unsteady aerodynamics and nonlinear flight dynamics, evaluate flight performance, and verify the flight control law. The typical test results of a pitch maneuver with open-loop and closed-loop control are presented, including a one-degree-of-freedom pitch motion and a two-degrees-of-freedom pitch and roll motion. The serious pitch and roll-coupled motion during a pitch maneuver at a high angle of attack is revealed, and the flight control law for decoupled control is successfully verified. The comparison of the test results and the flight data of a real pitch maneuver proves the reliability and capability of virtual flight testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cruising velocity of animals, or robotic vehicles, that use flapping wings or fins to propel themselves is not constant but oscillates around a mean value with an amplitude usually much smaller than the mean, and a frequency that typically doubles the flapping frequency. Quantifying the effect that these velocity fluctuations may have on the propulsion of a flapping and oscillating airfoil is of great relevance to properly modeling the self-propelled performance of these animals or robotic vehicles. This is the objective of the present work, where the force and moment that an oscillating stream exerts on a two-dimensional pitching and heaving airfoil are obtained analytically using the vortical impulse theory in the linear potential flow limit. The thrust force of the flapping airfoil in a pulsating stream in this limit is obtained here for the first time. The lift force and moment derived here contain new terms in relation to the pioneering work by Greenberg (1947), which are shown quantitatively unimportant. The theoretical results obtained here are compared with existing computational data for flapping foils immersed in a stream with velocity oscillating sinusoidally about a mean value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exergy concept originates from the field of static thermodynamics and expresses the maximum theoretically recoverable mechanical work from a system while it evolves toward its dead thermodynamic state. It accounts for both mechanical and thermal mechanisms, and it allows to separate reversible and irreversible losses in the system's transformations. The physical insight provided by this concept motivated the development of an exergy-based performance evaluation method in the field of aerodynamics. The resulting formulation has the advantage of being independent of the feasibility of a drag/thrust breakdown (ambiguous for highly integrated engine concepts) and includes thermal effects in the performance metrics. It, however, relies on an adapted definition of exergy, in particular involving a dead state in motion. This adapted definition is not trivial and raises theoretical concerns due to fundamental thermodynamic properties of exergy not being always satisfied. This paper aims at proposing a corrected version of this definition that ensures that the fundamental properties of exergy are respected. First, the exergy concept is presented alongside the concerns raised by its original adaptation, which, to the best of the authors' knowledge, has been used in all exergy-based flowfield analyses in the field of applied aerodynamics. Then, an unsteady exergy balance is derived in the geocentric reference frame (in which there are no ambiguities in the definition of exergy) and then transformed to a reference frame in translation. The corrected adaptation of the exergy definition for aerodynamics applications is extracted from this transformation and the impact on the exergy balance is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An improved multi-fidelity unsteady aerodynamic model based on Hierarchical Kriging is proposed. • Uncertainty estimation is allowed by the Hierarchical Kriging. • The proposed model improves accuracy while allowing error estimation. • An active learning strategy is developed that balances accuracy and cost. By fusing aerodynamic data from multiple sources, multi-fidelity methods can well balance model accuracy and computational cost. To extend multi-fidelity models for predicting unsteady aerodynamics with uncertainty estimation, an improved modelling framework based on the Hierarchical Kriging (HK) is proposed for nonlinear aerodynamic reduced-order modelling. This aerodynamic modelling framework is achieved by a two-stage modelling strategy. In the first stage, using the current and time-delayed low-fidelity aerodynamic load and pitching motion as input, a linear regression model is built to achieve preliminary aerodynamic prediction. In the second stage, the current and time-delayed preliminary prediction, as well as pitching motion history are used as the input of the Hierarchical Kriging model to predict the high-fidelity aerodynamic loads. The generalization capability of this improved modelling framework is firstly verified by several analytical examples. Furthermore, with three sets of training samples taken from harmonic pitching motions of an airfoil in transonic flow, the proposed model achieves accurate prediction on unsteady aerodynamics of other harmonic and random motions, and provides reliable uncertainty estimation of the predicted unsteady aerodynamics. In addition, the computational cost and prediction errors of multi-fidelity and the single-fidelity aerodynamic model are compared. Even with the same computational cost, the proposed multi-fidelity model still shows improved accuracy. Finally, using the uncertainty estimation of the proposed model, an active learning task is performed, which actively selects and incrementally adds the required training samples. With active learning, a good balance between model accuracy and cost of data acquisition is maintained, while avoiding over-fitting problems of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this work is to analyze the aerodynamic response of SARAS transport aircraft to a gust condition. A rigid airframe is assumed. The increments in load factors due to vertical gust are calculated for gust gradient distances varying from 30 to 350ft as per Federal Aviation Requirements (FAR) specifications. The variations in the angles of attack due to gust and airplane motion are also studied. This tuned discrete gust analysis includes the effects of unsteady aerodynamics. The analysis is performed considering the aircraft plunge degree of motion (tail-off). The effect of damping due to the tail contribution is also studied.

The deposition of combustion residues in the nozzle ring (NR) of a turbocharger turbine stage changes the NR geometry significantly in a random manner. The resultant complex and highly asymmetric geometry induces low engine order (LEO) excitation, which may lead to resonance excitation of rotor blades and high cycle fatigue (HCF) failure. Therefore, a suitable prediction workflow is of great importance for the design and validation phases. The prediction of LEO excitation is, however, computationally expensive as high-fidelity, full annulus CFD models are required. Previous investigations showed that a steady-state computational model consisting of the volute, the NR, and a radial extension is suitable to reduce the computational costs massively and to qualitatively predict the level of LEO forced response. In the current paper, the aerodynamic excitation of 69 real contaminated NRs is analyzed using this simplified approach. The results obtained by the simplified simulation model are used to select 13 contaminated NR geometries, which are then simulated with a model of the entire turbine stage, including the rotor, in a transient time-marching manner to provide high-fidelity simulation results for the verification of the simplified approach. Furthermore, two contamination patterns are analyzed in a more detailed manner regarding their aerodynamic excitation. It is found that the simplified model can be used to identify and classify contamination patterns that lead to high blade vibration amplitudes. In cases where transient effects occurring in the rotor alter the harmonic pressure field significantly, the ability of the simplified approach to predict the LEO excitation is not sufficient.

Unsteady component interaction represents a crucial topic in turbomachinery design and analysis. Combustor/turbine interaction is one of the most widely studied topics both using experimental and numerical methods due to the risk of failure of high-pressure turbine blades by unexpected deviation of hot flow trajectory and local heat transfer characteristics. Compressor/combustor interaction is also of interest since it has been demonstrated that, under certain conditions, a non-uniform flow field feeds the primary zone of the combustor where the high-pressure compressor blade passing frequency can be clearly individuated. At the integral scale, the relative motion between vanes and blades in compressor and turbine stages governs the aerothermal performance of the gas turbine, especially in the presence of shocks. At the inertial scale, high turbulence levels generated in the combustion chamber govern wall heat transfer in the high-pressure turbine stage, and wakes generated by low-pressure turbine vanes interact with separation bubbles at low-Reynolds conditions by suppressing them. The necessity to correctly analyze these phenomena obliges the scientific community, the industry, and public funding bodies to cooperate and continuously build new test rigs equipped with highly accurate instrumentation to account for real machine effects. In computational fluid dynamics, researchers developed fast and reliable methods to analyze unsteady blade-row interaction in the case of uneven blade count conditions as well as component interaction by using different closures for turbulence in each domain using high-performance computing. This research effort results in countless publications that contribute to unveiling the actual behavior of turbomachinery flow. However, the great number of publications also results in fragmented information that risks being useless in a practical situation. Therefore, it is useful to collect the most relevant outcomes and derive general conclusions that may help the design of next-gen turbomachines. In fact, the necessity to meet the emission limits defined by the Paris agreement in 2015 obliges the turbomachinery community to consider revolutionary cycles in which component interaction plays a crucial role. In the present paper, the authors try to summarize almost 40 years of experimental and numerical research in the component interaction field, aiming at both providing a comprehensive overview and defining the most relevant conclusions obtained in this demanding research field.

Based on the open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) platform, OpenFOAM, two numerical simulation methods for gusty inflow characterization and gust response prediction are implemented by solving the fundamental incompressible unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) equations. One is the Field Velocity Method (FVM) and the other is the Oscillating Vane Method (OVM). The gust velocity field is characterized and the aerodynamic responses of some airfoils under the Sears-type sinusoidal gusts are predicted by both gust simulation methods. The results indicate that both methods are capable of obtaining satisfactory gusty inflow conditions as expected as well as the airfoil aerodynamic responses. Comparatively, from the perspective of computing cost, the FVM is more advantageous in reducing the computational resources than the OVM while simultaneously ensuring the computational accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A zonal detached eddy simulation (ZDES) method, based on the two-equation k-ω SST turbulence model, was employed to predict stall characteristics and capture small-scale vortex structures in the wake region of the main wing under the post-stall condition of the Common Research Model (CRM) configuration. Additionally, the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) method was utilized for performance comparison in resolving small-scale vortices with ZDES. The results revealed a pronounced lateral flow on the wing, induced by the low-pressure region of the inner wing at post-stall angles of attack. Due to the downwash effect, the horizontal tail was influenced by the vortices in the wake region of the main wing, which the URANS method did not capture adequately. As the angle of attack increased, the separation area on the main wing expanded from the middle of the wing towards the inner wing. Consequently, the vortex structures in the wake region of the main wing became more intricate, and the primary peak of the lift coefficient spectrum shifted to the low-frequency region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flying insects exhibit outperforming stability and control via continuous wing flapping even under severe disturbances in various conditions of wind gust and turbulence. While conventional linear proportional derivative (PD)-based controllers are widely employed in insect-inspired flight systems, they usually fail to deal with large perturbation conditions in terms of the 6-DoF nonlinear control strategy. Here we propose a novel wing kinematics-based controller, which is optimized based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to stabilize bumblebee hovering under large perturbations. A high-fidelity Open AI Gym environment is established through coupling a CFD data-driven aerodynamic model and a 6-DoF flight dynamic model. The control policy with an action space of 4 is optimized using the off-policy Soft Actor–Critic (SAC) algorithm with automating entropy adjustment, which is verified to be of feasibility and robustness to achieve fast stabilization of the bumblebee hovering flight under full 6-DoF large disturbances. The 6-DoF wing kinematics-based DRL control strategy may provide an efficient autonomous controller design for bioinspired flapping-wing micro air vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this work is to analyze the aerodynamic response of SARAS transport aircraft to a gust condition. A rigid airframe is assumed. The increments in load factors due to vertical gust are calculated for gust gradient distances varying from 30 to 350ft as per Federal Aviation Requirements (FAR) specifications. The variations in the angles of attack due to gust and airplane motion are also studied. This tuned discrete gust analysis includes the effects of unsteady aerodynamics. The analysis is performed considering the aircraft plunge degree of motion (tail-off). The effect of damping due to the tail contribution is also studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work discusses the experimental challenges and processing of unsteady experiments for a pitching wing in the low-speed wind tunnel of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The setup used for unsteady experiments consisted of two independent devices: (a) a position control device to steer the pitch angle of the wing, and (b) a pressure measurement device to measure the aerodynamic loads. The position control setup can pitch the wing for a range of frequencies, amplitude, and offset levels. In this work, a NACA-0018 wing profile was used with an aspect ratio of 1.8. The position control and the pressure measurement setups operate independently of each other, necessitating advanced signal processing techniques to synchronize the pitch angle and the lift force. Furthermore, there is a (not well-documented) issue with the (sampling) clock frequency of the pressure measurement setup, which was resolved using a fully automated spectral analysis technique. The wing was pitched using a simple harmonic sine excitation signal at eight different offset levels (between 6° and 21°) for a fixed amplitude variation (std) of 6°. At each offset level, the wing was pitched at five different frequencies between 0.1 Hz and 2 Hz (that correspond to reduced frequencies k ranging from 0.006 to 0.125). All the experiments were conducted at a fixed chord-based Reynolds number of 2.85 × 105. The choice of operating parameters invokes the linear and nonlinear behavior of the wing. The linear unsteady measurements agreed with the analytical results. The unsteady pressure measurements at higher offset levels revealed the nonlinear aerodynamic phenomenon of dynamic stall. This confirms that a nonlinear and dynamic model is required to capture the salient characteristics of the lift force on a pitching wing.

Abstract Growing horizontal axis wind turbines are increasingly exposed to significant sources of unsteadiness, such as tower shadowing, yawed or waked conditions and environmental effects. Due to increased dimensions, the use of steady tabulated airfoil coefficients to determine the airloads along long blades can be questioned in those numerical fluid models that do not have the sufficient resolution to solve explicitly and dynamically the flow close to the blade. Various models exist to describe unsteady aerodynamics (UA). However, they have been mainly implemented in engineering models, which lack the complete capability of describing the unsteady and multiscale nature of wind energy. To improve the description of the blades' aerodynamic response, a 2D unsteady aerodynamics model is used in this work to estimate the airloads of the actuator line model in our fluid–structure interaction (FSI) solver, based on 3D large eddy simulation. At each section along the actuator lines, a semi‐empirical Beddoes‐Leishman model includes the effects of noncirculatory terms, unsteady trailing edge separation, and dynamic stall in the dynamic evaluation of the airfoils' aerodynamic coefficients. The aeroelastic response of a utility‐scale wind turbine under uniform, laminar and turbulent, sheared inflows is examined with one‐ and two‐way FSI coupling between the blades' structural dynamics and local airloads, with and without the enhanced aerodynamics' description. The results show that the external half of the blade is dominated by aeroelastic effects, whereas the internal one is dominated by significant UA phenomena, which was possible to represent only thanks to the additional model implemented.

Aircraft configurations with propellers have been drawing more attention in recent times, partly due to new propulsion concepts based on hydrogen fuel cells and electric motors. These configurations are prone to whirl flutter, which is an aeroelastic instability affecting airframes with elastically supported propellers. It commonly needs to be mitigated already during the design phase of such configurations, requiring, among other things, unsteady aerodynamic transfer functions for the propeller. However, no comprehensive assessment of unsteady propeller aerodynamics for aeroelastic analysis is available in the literature. This paper provides a detailed comparison of nine different low- to mid-fidelity aerodynamic methods, demonstrating their impact on linear, unsteady aerodynamics, as well as whirl flutter stability prediction. Quasi-steady and unsteady methods for blade lift with or without coupling to blade element momentum theory are evaluated and compared to mid-fidelity potential flow solvers (UPM and DUST) and classical, derivative-based methods. Time-domain identification of frequency-domain transfer functions for the unsteady propeller hub loads is used to compare the different methods. Predictions of the minimum required pylon stiffness for stability show good agreement among the mid-fidelity methods. The differences in the stability predictions for the low-fidelity methods are higher. Most methods studied yield a more unstable system than classical, derivative-based whirl flutter analysis, indicating that the use of more sophisticated aerodynamic modeling techniques might be required for accurate whirl flutter prediction.

The initiation of leading-edge-vortex formation in unsteady airfoil flows is governed by flow criticality at the leading edge. While earlier works demonstrated the promise of criticality of leading-edge suction in governing LEV shedding, this criterion is airfoil and Reynolds number dependent. In this work, by examining results from Navier–Stokes computations for a large set of pitching airfoil cases at laminar flow conditions, we show that the onset of flow reversal at the leading edge always corresponds to the boundary-layer shape factor reaching the same critical value that governs laminar flow separation in steady airfoil flows. Further, we show that low-order prediction of this boundary-layer criticality is possible with an integral-boundary-layer calculation performed using potential-flow velocity distributions from an unsteady panel method. The low-order predictions agree well with the high-order computational results with a single empirical offset that is shown to work for multiple airfoils. This work shows that boundary-layer criticality governs LEV initiation, and that a low-order prediction approach is capable of predicting this boundary-layer criticality and LEV initiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active gust load alleviation techniques exhibit a high potential in significantly reducing the transient gust loads on aircraft. In this work the aerodynamic potential of trailing-edge flaps and leading-edge flaps is numerically studied with the purpose to significantly reduce the structural gust loads. The utilized spanwise-segmented flaps represent slight modifications of existing devices for high-lift and maneuvering. The investigations based on unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes computations are conducted by employing a generic wing-fuselage aircraft configuration at transonic flow conditions. Idealized discrete "1-cos "-type vertical gusts that are relevant for the certification process are used as representative atmospheric disturbances. The focus of this paper is to introduce a practicable prediction method for required trailing- and leading-edge flap deflections for a significant mitigation of gust-induced wing loads. The three-dimensional flap deflections are determined by parametric two-dimensional simulations at representative wing sections. Different extensions of the estimation approach are investigated to assess the influence of the wing planform, the finite wing span, the aerodynamic phase lags, and the flap scheduling. It is shown that the trailing- and leading-edge flaps are promising in terms of alleviation of gust-induced wing bending and wing torsional moments, respectively. However, at high leading-edge flap deflections that are necessary for a full compensation of the wing torsional moment large-scale flow separation is identified. The introduced gust load alleviation approach indicates a good transferability between two-dimensional airfoil and three-dimensional wing aerodynamics for unsteady flap deflections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, reciprocating internal combustion engines are used in many branches of the economy (power engineering, machine engineering, transportation, and others). In order for piston engines to meet stringent environmental and economic regulations, it is necessary to develop complex and accurate control systems for the physical processes in engine elements based on digital twins, machine learning, and artificial intelligence algorithms. This article is aimed at preparing and analysing experimental data on the gas dynamics and heat transfer of pulsating air flows in a piston engine's intake system for modelling and machine learning. The key studies were carried out on a full-scale model of a single-cylinder piston engine under dynamic conditions. Some experimental findings on the gas-dynamic and heat-exchange characteristics of the flows were obtained with the thermal anemometry method and a corresponding measuring system. The effects of the inlet channel diameter on the air flow, the intensity of turbulence, and the heat transfer coefficient of pulsating air flows in a piston engine's inlet system are shown. A mathematical description of the dependences of the turbulence intensity, heat transfer coefficient, and Nusselt number on operation factors (crankshaft speed, air flow velocity, Reynolds number) and the inlet channel's geometric dimensions are proposed. Based on the mathematical modelling of the thermodynamic cycle, the operational and environmental performance of a piston engine with intake systems containing channels with different diameters were assessed. The presented data could be useful for refining engineering calculations and mathematical models, as well as for developing digital twins and engine control systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spanwise morphing wing can change its aerodynamic shape to suit its flight environment, thereby having the potential to improve the flight performance of the aircraft, especially in gusty conditions. To investigate the potential of morphing wings, the aerodynamic performance of a spanwise morphing wing with a flapping wingtip in a gust environment was analyzed in this paper. The aerodynamic characteristics of the morphing wing are hard to measure accurately, and thus a wind tunnel test was carried out to study the influences of morphing parameters, such as the morphing length, amplitude and frequency on the gust alleviation effect. The flow mechanism of the designed spanwise morphing wing was analyzed in detail by the instantaneous lift results of the wind tunnel test and the flow field results of the CFD method. The results have shown that with appropriate morphing parameters, the spanwise morphing wing designed in this paper can effectively achieve gust alleviation during flight. The conclusions obtained in this paper can be useful guidance for the design of morphing aircraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]