Aerodynamic Analysis of Variable Cant Angle Winglets for Higher Mach regimes

Abstract

The performance of the aircraft is reduced due to induced drag generated at the wingtip. The vortices are generated at the wingtip in the turbulent flow. For the reduction of the vortices the small device with the positive or negative cant angle called winglet is introduced. This paper describes Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis, performed on a trapezoidal wing prototype with a winglet of NACA 63(2)-215 airfoil section. The White comb geometry is used for the parametric values of the winglet. The objectives of the analysis were to compare the aerodynamic characteristics and to investigate the performance of winglets at cant angles -15°, 0°, 15°, 30° and 450 at the constant angle of attack (AOA) 0°. The entire wing works on around 0.5 Mach .The CFD simulations were performed in ANSYS fluent. 3-dimensional unstructured tetrahedral meshes were used to compute the flow around the model. The parameters like pressure, velocity are found and analyzed at different cant angles.