An Experimental Comparison of Aerodynamic Performance and Flow Visualization of Corrugated Winglet with Conventional Winglet

摘要

The performance of an aircraft wing is highly affected byinduced drag caused by wingtip vortices. Winglets are intended toreduce the formation of these vortices. This paper describes the windtunnel experiments conducted on three wing models i.e. (a)rectangular wing (b) wing with conventional winglet and a (c) wingwith corrugated winglet, having NACA 0012 airfoil cross section.The objective of the analysis is to examine the effect of thecorrugation of winglets in improving the aerodynamic efficiency ofthe wing. The experiment was done in a subsonic low-speed windtunnel. Six Component Balance was used to obtain aerodynamiccharacteristics such as Coefficient of Lift (Cl), Coefficient of Drag(Cd) and Cl/Cd at Reynolds number 116000. Smoke flow visualizationwas done to find vortices and regions of separated flow at Reynoldsnumber 22000. Tuft flow visualization was done to observe regions ofstrong cross-flow, reverse flow, and flow separation at Reynoldsnumber 172000. Both the aerodynamic characteristics and flowvisualization results showed that the corrugated winglet performedaerodynamically better than the wing with conventional winglet andrectangular wing.