COMPARING POTENTIAL FLOW SOLVERS FOR AERODYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS ESTIMATION OF THE T-FLEX UAV

The FliPASED project aims to design an actively-controlled wing with an aero-servo-structural optimization toolchain to achieve drag reduction, and test the new design on the T-FLEX demonstrator, which is a 7m wingspan unmanned aircraft with a V-Tail. Accurate and fast predictions of aerodynamic characteristics is vital in this preliminary design optimization process. This paper discusses the applicability of several low order aerodynamic tools to such aircraft while comparing them with a higher order CFD tool. The lifting-line based XFLR5 and PAWAT, the vortex-lattice based AVL, Tornado, PyTornado and VSPAERO, the 3D panel based FlightStream, and the commercial CFD tool STAR-CCM+ were used. The results include a convergence study, computational performance of each tool and comparison of calculated force and moment coefficients. The user experience of these tools are shared.     «

The FliPASED project aims to design an actively-controlled wing with an aero-servo-structural optimization toolchain to achieve drag reduction, and test the new design on the T-FLEX demonstrator, which is a 7m wingspan unmanned aircraft with a V-Tail. Accurate and fast predictions of aerodynamic characteristics is vital in this preliminary design optimization process. This paper discusses the applicability of several low order aerodynamic tools to such aircraft while comparing them with a hi...     »