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INFLUENCE OF DIFFERENT FORMS OF WINGLETS ON THE FLOW AROUND THE

WING

Thesis · June 2016

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.19786.16323

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INFLUENCE OF DIFFERENT FORMS OF WINGLETS ON THE
FLOW AROUND THE WING
Ahmed ZEKKOUR Dr. Laid MESSAOUDI
University of Batna 2 University of Batna 2
zekkour.ahmed@univ-batna.dz laidmessaoudi@univ-batna.dz

June 22,2016
Abstract

The objective of this study is to simulate the turbulent flow around aircraft wings during takeoff, equipped
with various types of winglets. Four types of configurations were studied and compared in case of a wing
without winglets. We designed different configurations with « Ansys Design Modeler » and then simulated
kinematic and dynamic fields of different configurations using the « StarCCM+ » software. The turbulence
model used is the Spallar-Almaras.

I. Introduction bulent flow around aircraft wings during take-

off corresponding to an angle of 8 degrees,
he winglets are small wings added to the equipped with various types of winglets. We
T tips of aircraft wings in order to improve
performance without increasing efforts on their
will use different configurations of winglets,
and compare the results to the case of a wing
structure. We must keep in mind that the without winglets. We use successively "An-
point of view of the induced drag reduction, sys Design Modeler" software for the design
a winglet is not actually more effective than a of these winglets and "StarCCM +" for mesh-
simple extension of the wing. But the winglets ing and simulation of kinematic and dynamic
are a great way to reduce induced drag by min- fields of different configurations.
imizing efforts on the structure at the wing
root. Their use is particularly recommended
in cases where the scope should be limited II. Conception
by structural and other constraints. In addi-
tion, the drag reduction is essential to reduce For some winglets, we also used the NACA-
consumption and pollution. Furthermore, the 0012 profile with an accuracy of 200 points but
winglets have the advantage of improving the this time the coordinates were generated using
stability of the flight. They can also be consid- the utility "JAVAFOIL" which is available on
ered as supplementary devices to add to the Windows and Linux. A first attempt to design
old aircraft to improve performance without winglets was done with ’Star-CCM + Modeler
incurring a costly process. "but we lost a lot of time because of its low
Fuel consumption surveys have also shown flexibility.A second attempt was made with the
that the use of winglets reduces the consump- "SolidWorks" software but failed due to lack
tion of 5 to 7 % compared to aircraft without of learning of that time.We finally looked at
winglets. This represents significant sums for "Ansys Design Modeler" which is very power-
airlines. One last important point is that im- ful to produce complex geometries. The files
proves air traffic by minimizing the time off exported by it are easily exploitable by "Star-
between two successive planes. CCM +". We then spent two weeks at 5 to 10
The aim of our study is to simulate the tur- hours a day to achieve the first design. Other
designs, of course, took less time.

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 MSc Degree Thesis Summary • June 2016

III. Numerical Model

i. Mesh
In practice, there is no specific rule for the
creation of a valid mesh, however there are
different approaches that achieve an acceptable
mesh. We can summarize them as follows:

• Maintaining good quality of cells.

• Ensure good resolution in high gradient
regions.
AWS
• Ensure good in smoothing the transition
zones (between the last prism layer and
the first poly cell in the mesh).
• Minimize the total number of elements
(reasonable calculation time).

A good mesh quality based on the minimiza-

tion of "skewness" and a good resolution in
regions with high gradient (boundary layers,
shock waves, etc..). A good mesh must also
be sufficiently "smooth". The computational
domain is defined by a mesh representing the
fluid and solid surfaces involved .

Mesh
Mesher Polyhedral
AWW Base size 1 m.
Target surface size 250 mm
Min surface size 2.5 mm
Growth rate 1.2
Number of layers 15
Layers growth rate 1.1
Layers thickness 37 mm
Volumetric control 50 mm

Table 1: Mesh Parameters

AWDC

Boundary Layer Mesh Quality

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 MSc Degree Thesis Summary • June 2016

ii. Boundary Conditions

In the case of CFD , it is important to choose
and control the size between the wall and the
first boundary layer or y+ , also the maximum
number of layers that can be used, in our case
y+ ≥4, as mentioned in the reference article.
To estimate the thickness of the overall
boundary layer we used the approximate equa-
tion Von Karman :
1
AWS Mesh Quality δ = 0.37L1Re 5 (1)

The turbulence length scale, l, is a physical

quantity which represents the size of the large
eddies in turbulent flows. Empirical relation-
ship between the physical size of the obstruc-
tion (or characteristic length), L, and the size of
the eddy, l, can be used to get an approximate
length scale.
l = 0.07L (2)

The overall number of layers in the boundary

layer is a parameter that can be changed eas-
ily from the calculation code . The maximum
number that can be used if the y+ is used is
limited to 30 layers , and if this parameter was
AWW Mesh Quality not used can reach up to 90 layers
The boundary conditions that we introduce
in the software "StarCCM+" and that we used
for our various simulations are shown in the
following table:

Calculation
Space 3D Steady
Turbulence Model Spallart Allmaras
y+ parameter All y+ Wall
Dynamic viscosity 1.85508 × 10−5 Pa-s
Air Density 1.225Kg/m3
Turbulence intensity 1%
Turbulent length 0.07 m
scale
AWDC Mesh Quality Velocity 70 m/s

Table 2: Boundary Conditions.

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 MSc Degree Thesis Summary • June 2016

IV. Results

The result are the fruits of good design and

a good mesh. We will , in this section, re-
view the quality of these two steps through the
different results we can get out after making
the calculations. Note that the post-treatment
also requires all system resources including the
graphics card and memory dedicated to exploit
fully the results. In order not to unnecessar-
ily burden the document, we only present the
most significant results of our work.

Case Cells Vertices Size Time ASW

ASW 846 068 4 627 754 363 Mo 5h 46mn
AWS 3 539 518 13 957 712 1.18 Go 16h 15mn
AWW 3 372 858 14 391 205 1.19 Go 9h 27mn
AWDC 3 045 692 17 388 896 1.08 Go 6h 23mn

Table 3: Mesh results for all configurations.

the table below gives us the forces of lift

and drag configuration for each case and the
relative error compared to the case ASW(wing
without winglet).

Case Lift (N) Drag (N) Lift/Drag R.ERR(%)

AS 9105.87 514.536 17.69 0.0%
ASW 10476.5 510.631 20.51 -0.75%
ADW 10017.9 487.966 20.52 -5.16%
AWW 9582.54 458.222 20.91 -10.9%
AWS
Table 4: Aerodynamic Forces Results

The Q-Criterion is a visualization criterion of

turbulent flows , it sets the vorticity as a fluid
region even with a second positive invariant
∇u. This criterion also adds a second condi-
tion on the pressure , limiting the latter to be
below ambient pressure in the vortex. This test
represents a balance between the strain rate
and intensity of eddies and swirls as defining
surfaces whose intensity is greater than the rate
of deformation. Using the same scale for the
various configurations, we have the following
figures:
These figures clearly show that the AWW
configuration is the one with the lowest value AWW
of the Q- Criterion . We have already noted
the low value of the drag coefficient of this

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 MSc Degree Thesis Summary • June 2016

References
[1] A. B. a. Joel E. Guerrero a, Dario Maestro
a, “biomimetic spiroid winglets for lift
and drag control,” 2011.

[2] A. Partners, “Blended winglet technology,” 2016.

[3] N. L. R. Center, “Geographic information

systems (gis) team,” 2015.

[4] B. doc, “Aérodynamique et mécanique du vol,”

AWDC 2013.

[5] H. Nouri and F. Ravelet, “Introduction à la

configuration. That may be why this winglet simulation numérique des écoulements. application
is currently used in many aircraft’s. au transfert thermique sur plaque plane avec
starccm+,ensam - paris, france,” 2013.
Note :
[6] . R. P. E.N. Jacobs, K.E. Ward, “The
We must mention that we have not achieved characteristics of 78 related airfoil
easily all these results and meshes. The first sections from tests in the variable-density wind
problem was the use of software in February tunnel",” 1933.
2016 was the first time we use " Star- CCM +
." At first we u sed a m icrocomputer w ith an
i3 processor and a RAM of 4 GB and we have [9] J. Vinçonneau, “Utilisation des winglets,”
not even managed to generate a single mesh. 2007-2008.
We then moved to a PC i5 4 cores and 4 GB
of RAM with which we have conducted our [10] D. G. Ouahiba, “Les techniques cfd,”
modest work . Normally, a 3D problem as ours 2011.
requires computing station with a minimum of
64 GB RAM and a dozen processors! [11] L. de Vinci, “La turbulence,” 1452-1519.

[12] F. joel lopes Gamboa, “Numerical

V. Conclusion analysis of an wing sail aerodynamic
characteristics
The results we found we confirm t he impor- using computational fluid dynamics,” 2010.
tance of the use of winglets . Indeed, the pres-
ence of the winglet modifies t he s tructure of [13] A. Saxena, “Guidelines for specification
the flow carrying the vortex towards the end of turbulence at inflow boundaries.”
of the winglet and contributes to the wing lift
and reduces drag. [14] “A history of the langley aeronautical
The consequences of these physical phenom- laboratory, chapter 4 with a view to
ena cause a reduction in annual fuel consump- practical solutions,” 1917-1958.
tion and a good air traffic management.
As prospects for this work , we recommend [15] airfoiltools website, “Naca 4 digit airfoil
using robust means ( workstation) in order to generator (naca 2412 airfoil),” 2016.
examine in detail the structure of the vortices
around the wing and behind the winglet . Also, [16] V. Holmen, “Methods for vortex
the experimental validation is to advocate in identification,” 2012.
this case using scale models in the wind tunnel of
the aerodynamic laboratory.
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