Short take-off and landing lengths for high altitude air strips require meticulous design of high lift airfoil configurations. Precise relative positions and orientation of airfoil elements are essential to evolve landing configuration for high Clmax. The requirement gets compounded for finding take-off configuration which generates a low drag.

The current design process goes through numerical analysis of a large number of configurations, and their selection, before wind tunnel test is carried out. Though geometric parameterization is usually simple, the complexity lies in high angle of physics with accurate stall prediction. Our experience for a typical Reynolds number of 5 millions shows requirement of the near wall mesh to be orthogonal layer of 10 microns thickness. Though structured mutli-block mesh is best, and probably the only reliable option, time is wasted making it again-and-again for multiple configurations, combined by the need for multiple angle of attack runs per configuration for stall prediction.

Zeus Numerix delivered a customized package with a purpose to ensure rapid turn-around time with minimal user intervention. The following figure shows the flexibility that it offers in modifying geometric parameter.

High Lift Configuration

The flexibility allowed for introduction of optimization module through which profile with required Clmax was obtained.

Comparison of the various cases generated by the Customized Package by Zeus Numerix