Plasma actuation for improved aircraft aerodynamics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This research program is a collaboration between researchers in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at École Polytechnique de Montréal and in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K). It consists of three projects involving flow control using plasma actuators. Flow control consists of placing relatively low-power actuators at strategic locations to have disproportionally large effects on the flow field. A plasma actuator is a recent electro-fluidic technology capable of converting electricity directly into flow momentum without any moving parts. It does so via partial air ionization through the application of high voltages (but at very low power) between two parallel but offset electrodes separated by a dielectric material. This solid-state, light, thin, simple and purely electrical actuator has high bandwidth and is easy to integrate thus offering the first practical widespread use of flow control to potentially revolutionize aircraft aerodynamics. The first project of the research aims to delay laminar-turbulent boundary layer transition on aircraft surfaces with plasma actuators in order to reduce viscous drag. The second project will investigate the control of boundary layer separation on airfoils at high angles of attack to increase the effectiveness of airfoil flaps in the short term and eventually to remove wing flaps, slats and spoilers altogether. The third project is to develop two new concepts to change lift on wings and empenages at low angles of attack with well-attached boundary layers via modification of the wing tip vortex and trainling edge flow curvature with plasma actuators in order to eliminate all movable flight control surfaces. École Polytechnique de Montréal will be responsible for setting up and carrying out all wind tunnel validation experiments in all three projects as well as some numerical simulations in project 3 while IIT-K will be responsible for all computational work in projects 1 and 2 and part of project 3.