Date of Award

Fall 11-2017

Access Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

William Engblom

First Committee Member

R.R. Mankbadi

Second Committee Member

Snorri Gudmundsson

Abstract

Accurate numerical prediction of transition onset as well as transition extent is crucial when evaluating the performance of many remotely controlled and autonomous aircraft. The four-equation Menter-Langtry Transitional viscous model in ANSYS Fluent is applied to a number of 2D and 3D airfoils and wings operating within the transitional flow regime, to permit comparison to relevant experimental and numerical results for transition onset, extent, and overall aerodynamic performance. The sensitivity to grid topology and fineness is also examined. With sufficient confidence in the numerical approach, the performance of a well-known high performance R/C glider is examined and compared to results obtained from a vortex-lattice method based approach.

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