AERO 585 Seminar Laminar Flow Control on Swept Wings: Computations and Experiments

Helen L. Reed Professor of Aerospace Engineering Texas A&M University When: 4pm, Thursday, October 28 Where: Boeing Lecture Hall, FXB Abstract: The ability to accurately predict and control the transition process from laminar to turbulent flow will provide significant advances in air-vehicle design, with applications ranging from high-altitude longendurance unmanned aerial vehicles, to energy-efficient transports and hypersonic reentry systems. Recent work by Saric et al. using spanwise-periodic discrete roughness elements (DREs) has shown great promise as a means of controlling the crossflow instability responsible for transition over a swept wing without the need for a complex suction system. As part of a series of wind-tunnel experiments and flight tests, the Texas A&M Flight Research Lab is currently designing a Laminar Flow Control (LFC) flight test with target conditions of M = 0.75, chord Reynolds numbers in the range of 22-30 million for passive laminar flow control via DREs, and a leading-edge sweep angle of 30. The Subsonic Aircraft Roughness Glove Experiment (SARGE) will be flown on the recently acquired NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) Subsonic Research Aircraft (SCRAT) Gulfstream III. Computational studies coupling full-aircraft Navier-Stokes simulations, linear stability theory, and the nonlinear parabolized stability equation formulation are concerned with designing the wing glove. The goal is validation of both the flight experiments and the prediction tools, as well as achieving laminar flow over the suction (test) side of the model. This work is sponsored by a ViGYAN grant administered by NASA Langley Research Center. The present work is a partnership with NASA Langley Research Center and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. Technical interactions with the NASA Centers are gratefully acknowledged. Bio: Professor Reed is the former Department Head at Texas A&M following faculty appointments at Stanford University and Arizona State University. She received her PhD in Mechanics from Virginia Tech under Ali Nayfeh. She has been active for 32 years in boundary-layer stability and transition; and for 17 years in integrating small-spacecraft research and design-build-fly, and has delivered 3 major satellites: 2 launched with the Air Force and 1 launched with NASA, with 2 more in progress. She is a member of the AIAA Transition Study Group, and co-PI for the NASA/Air Force National Hypersonics Science Center in Laminar-Turbulent Transition. She is a Fellow of AIAA, APS, and ASME.. She was the recipient of the 2007 J. Leland "Lee" Atwood Award from the ASEE Aerospace Division and AIAA. She was also inducted into the Academy of Engineering Excellence (May 2008) and the College of Engineering Committee of 100 (June 2010) at Virginia Tech.