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Practica 4.

Dinmica de Fluidos Computacionales


Instituto Politcnico Nacional
Prof. Luis Sergio Mrquez Jaime
_________________________________________________________________________

Aerodynamic Aircraft Geometry Design


_________________________________________________
The aim of this laboratory work is to generate a new aircraft geometry design by means of
modifying an existing generic aircraft geometry file. Each team will choose a particular
type of aircraft different to the other laboratory teams. The generic aircraft files contain
the dimensions and shapes of the different parts. i.e. fuselage, wings, etc. The
computational tools for this practice are Sumo, Matlab and Wordpad. And the smx files.
The available generic geometries to choose from are shown on figure 1.

Figure 1. Available generic geometries, (a) single engine utralight, (b) a light executive
jet, (c) twin engine utility aircraft, (d) a delta wing interceptor, (e) a sailplane and (f) a
four engine widebody.
Geometry files will be handed out in .smx format. This file contains information about the
airfoils used to create a wing, cross-sections used to create the fuselage, and similar data
that is necessary in order to define the engines, tail geometry, etc. and Typically this is
what a part of an .smx file looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>


<Assembly ppMaxPhi="30" ppMaxStretch="5" ppNiter="3" sumo_version="132616"
tgQuality="1.4" tgRadius="350.64">
<BodySkeleton akimatg="true" name="Fuselage" origin=" 0 0 0 " rotation=" 0 0 0
">
<BodyFrame center=" 0.548 0 0.417749 " height="0.176598" name="Frame1"
symmetric="true" width="0.1425684996">
<![CDATA[ 0 -1
0.577351 -0.866025
1 -0.5
1.1547 -6.12303e-017
1 0.5
0.577351 0.866025
1.41406e-016 1
]]>
</BodyFrame>
<BodyFrame center=" 0.922068 0 0.469297 " height="1.30979" name="Frame10"
symmetric="true" width="1.23178276865">
<![CDATA[ 1.55575e-016 -1
0.607419 -0.836536
1 -0.445249
1.12014 0.034712
0.975445 0.499462
0.580461 0.858263
3.28525e-016 1
]]>
</BodyFrame>
<BodyFrame center=" 1.63889 0 0.492598 " height="2.38708" name="Frame3"
symmetric="true" width="2.214772335">
<![CDATA[ 0 -1
0.577351 -0.866025
1 -0.5
1.1547 -6.12323e-017
1 0.5
0.577351 0.866025
1.4141e-016 1
]]>
</BodyFrame>
<BodyFrame center=" 2.54703 0 0.47587 " height="3.16020848169" name="Frame47"
symmetric="true" width="2.98478536426">
<![CDATA[ 3.61327e-017 -1
0.575229 -0.844171
0.967652 -0.4848
1.15052 0.0177901
1 0.532551
0.74537 0.803286
0.426806 1
1.40171e-016 1.02773
]]>
</BodyFrame>

Note that this is only a part of a much larger file. In order to modify the geometrical
characteristics of the aircraft first you will backup the original smx file, this will be useful
later on for comparisons. Now that you have a backup of the original file you can rename
the file as: IPN-5AM1-executive_jet.smx (just to name an example). After this you can
proceed to open the file using wordpad or an equivalent software for other operating
systems. When you start viewing the file you will encounter that it is possible to change
the cross-sections and side sections of the fuselage, or change the dimensions of the

wings, or the airfoils included in the wing. For example for the wing you will see
something like this:
0.982295 0.00274755
0.963393 0.00568075
0.942936 0.00885525
0.920797 0.0122909
0.896836 0.0160091
0.870905 0.0200332
0.842841 0.0243882
0.812469 0.0291018
0.779588 0.0341323
0.743973 0.0393742
0.705385 0.0447285
0.663559 0.0500389
0.61821 0.0550713
0.569024 0.0594233
0.515687 0.0626967
0.457885 0.0644485
0.397464 0.0643604
0.340801 0.0626841
0.291757 0.0600639
0.249322 0.0569096
0.21262 0.0534559
0.180884 0.0498687
0.153452 0.0462589
0.129747 0.0426982
0.109272 0.0392381
0.0915935 0.0359081
0.0763411 0.0327112
0.063193 0.029649
0.0518475 0.026813
0.042046 0.0242523
0.0335971 0.0218812
0.0263481 0.0195948
0.0201674 0.0173263
0.013939 0.0145741
0.00797842 0.0112018
0.00269293 0.00687394
-4.22246e-005 0.000746563
0.00306013 -0.0051263
0.00892471 -0.00862786
0.0153268 -0.0110602
0.0218884 -0.0128602
0.0282779 -0.0142142
0.0357115 -0.0154791
0.0443275 -0.0167222
0.0542888 -0.0180507
0.0657921 -0.0195542
0.0790853 -0.0211796
0.0944564 -0.0228298

0.112223 -0.0245053
0.132752 -0.02621
0.156469 -0.0279266
0.183864 -0.0296245
0.215505 -0.0312646
0.252043 -0.0327856
0.294235 -0.0340952
0.342947 -0.035069
0.399182 -0.0354631
0.459118 -0.0349108
0.516463 -0.0332857
0.569419 -0.0308652
0.61833 -0.0281678
0.663515 -0.0255156
0.705254 -0.0228436
0.74381 -0.0201895
0.779427 -0.0176015
0.81233 -0.0151139
0.842723 -0.0126861
0.870805 -0.0104208
0.896752 -0.00832789
0.920728 -0.00639403
0.942881 -0.00460716
0.963351 -0.0029561
0.982265 -0.00143053
0.99974 -2.09356e-005

A plot of this data can be seen in Figure 2. So what the student has to do now is change
the x,z points in these column vectors.

Figure 2. Points defining an airfoil used to generate the wing volume (for the executive
jet)
In a similar way other properties of the aircraft can be modified. For example for the
fuselage and the fairing definition we have these kind of profiles shown in Figure 3:

Figure 3. Skeletons of the fuselage and the fairing.


And similarly for the rest of the components, i.e. the fin, the left and right nacelle, the
pylon, the stabilizer and other wing airfoils. So the work now is to modify the aircraft
shape, and in the report you will have to:

1. Decide which changes you will make and then justify why you made the changes,
what advantages could the changes give? From an aerodynamic point of view, and
or utility point of view. i.e. changes that reduce drag, or to have more lift and grow
the fuselage for more passenger capacity, etc. Use your imagination, thickness,
lengths, shapes, cross-sections can be modified! In order to render the geometry
use the SUMO tool.

Figure 4. Original 4 engine plane (left) and Modified 4 engine plane similar to the
Airbus A300-600ST Beluga (right).
2. An explanation of how these changes where made, using plots for better
understanding of the original airfoil vs the modified airfoil. Since the last laboratory
works no matlab plots have been made, only ugly plots, here is the matlab code for
this type of plots:
load airfoil_pts.txt
scatter(airfoil_pts(:,1),airfoil_pts(:,2),'r*')
axis([-0.2 1.2 -0.2 0.2]);
xlabel('x');
ylabel('y');

where airfoil_pts.txt is a 2 column data file generated from the smx file.

Figure 5. left. Original airfoil right. Modified airfoil for generating the original and
modified wing.
3. The report should be written in a scientific format for a report, a good example can
be found in: http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov/papers/MDO7.pdf . In grosso modo, a
good title, a summary, nomenclature,introduction, Shape change, results and
conclusions. A REMINDER: PLOT DATA IN MATLAB!!!!
4. One thing to look for is that the geometry has smooth curves, this is useful if later
if we wish to analize the geometry using numerical methods like potential flow
solvers or CFD for a next laboratory work.

Figure 6. Aircraft discretization for CFD simulations.


Instructions made by: Luis Sergio Marquez Jaime

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