What is it about?
Active flow control uses tiny jets of air to change the flow around an aircraft. Researchers in the field have traditionally treated jet strength as the most important parameter. We challenge this practice because integrating active flow control technologies into aircraft design requires much more than understanding the relationship between jet strength and aerodynamic benefits gained. Our experiments show that control efficacy is a complex function of many independent parameters such as wing shape and jet location.
Featured Image
Photo by UX Gun on Unsplash
Why is it important?
We are entering an exciting era of aerospace research, where we have a mix of reliable aircraft designs with decades of flight history and promising technologies that have been matured in the laboratory. Collaboration and clear communication between industry and academia are critical for effective integration of this new "active flow control" technology into future aircraft designs. This article suggests an approach that is both data-driven and physics-informed so that the new technology helps surpass previous design limitations rather than being a simple add-on feature to existing designs.
Perspectives
This article features an experimental collaboration between two universities. While it was challenging to weave results from two experiments into one story, it was a great pleasure and honor to work with my co-authors. I hope this article will kindle interdisciplinary conversations across academia and industry on how we should approach the design of AFC-integrated aircraft!
Emile Oshima
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Parameters Defining Active Flow Control, July 2021, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2021-2855.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
