Physics of Fluids

Degregori E. & Kim J.W.

Transonic aircraft design has technological challenges in terms of fuel consumption, fluid-structure interaction, and noise emission. These include “drag divergence” that decreases the wing efficiency and “shock buffet” that generates an unsteady loading. In this paper, a new wing design concept by means of wavy leading edges (WLEs) is studied with the aim of alleviating the shock buffet on a supercritical aerofoil. For this study, high-resolution large-eddy simulations are conducted by using an in-house code CANARD (Compressible Aerodynamics & Aeroacoustics Research coDe) developed at the University of Southampton. The study shows that the use of WLEs results in an improvement of aerodynamic efficiency (time-averaged) and more importantly a significant reduction of unsteady loading caused by the shock buffet oscillations.