Studies on the effect of working fluid and the geometric design of airfoils on the aerodynamic performance of air vehicles operating in Martian atmosphere

Abstract

Unlike the Earth environment, the Martian atmosphere is mainly composed of carbon dioxide, which is characterized by low temperature and low density, resulting significant effects on the aerodynamic characteristics of air vehicles than those observed at the earth's atmosphere. In this study the effects of working fluids and the geometric designs of airfoils on the aerodynamic performance of 3D wing operating under Martian atmospheric conditions is performed, employing the experimental and numerical approaches. In addition, considering the operating environment of MARS, the effects of Reynolds and Mach numbers have also been studied at a larger scale. The results show that the working fluid does not significantly affect the aerodynamic performance of the wing, which is observed greatly sensitive to the variations in the flow Reynolds numbers, having lesser dependency on the Mach number. And the geometric design of airfoils is observed to greatly influence the wing aerodynamics operating at Martian conditions. Additionally, the numerical results present detailed insights on the stall onset for each operating conditions accompanied by the transformation of small-size high-frequency vortex shedding to large-size low-frequency vortex shedding.