Numerical Study of Nonadiabatic Wall Effects on Aerodynamic Characteristics of CHN-T1 Standard Model

Abstract

Cryogenic wind tunnels provide the for possibility aerodynamic tests to take place over high Reynolds numbers by operating at a low gas temperature to meet the real flight simulation requirements, especially for state-of-the-art large transport aircrafts. However, undesirable temperature gradients between the test model and the surroundings will be caused by the thermal non-equilibrium, changing the boundary layer characteristics and resulting in test errors. To study the nonadiabatic wall effects on the aerodynamic characteristics of the model in cryogenic wind tunnels, a numerical study was carried out for the CHN-T1 standard model under different wall temperature gradients. A code with a finite volume method and γ-Reθt transition model were used. The analysis concluded that the change in wall temperature significantly affects the surface pressure distribution, transition position and skin-friction coefficient of the model, thus varying the lift and drag coefficients of the aircraft. The influences on the flow characteristics of both laminar and turbulent boundary layers by the wall temperature gradient were also investigated.

Keywords

• cryogenic wind tunnel
• high Reynolds number
• CHN-T1
• temperature
• numerical simulation