This work describes the aerodynamic characteristics of an aircraft wing model with a Ruppell’s griffon vulture (RGV)-type winglet. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study using ANSYS 15.0 was conducted to study the effect of the RGV winglet on a rectangular wing. The NACA 65(3)-218 wing consists of 660 mm span and 121 mm chord length where the aspect ratio is 5.45. Eight different winglet configurations have been studied. Furthermore, the study is extended to study effect of cant angle and different angles of attack (AOA) to the winglet. A comparative study is done on aerodynamic features such as lift coefficient (CL), drag coefficient (CD), lift/drag ratio (CL/CD) and tip vortices to get the best RGV winglet design. The RGV winglet achieved highest CL compared to other types of winglets configuration. Based on contour plot analysis, the RGV winglet shows lower vortex formation compared to without winglet. The results show about 15 to 30% reduction in drag coefficient and 5 to 25% increase in lift coefficient by using an RGV winglet.

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Investigation of Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Wing Model With RGV Winglet

The interactions of tip leakage flow with mainstream and shock wave result in larger aerodynamic losses and blockage in high loading compressors and tend to be one of the triggers for flow instabil...

Numerical investigation of blade tip winglet on flow structure in a high loading transonic rotor

The tip winglet is employed to improve the flow stability of NASA Rotor 37. Two suction-side winglets with the maximum width of 0.25 and 0.5 times of the width of local blade tip section and two pr...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09576509211017004

Investigation on the effects of winglet geometry in a high loading compressor rotor

An experimental effort was undertaken to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of three winglets mounted chordwise to the tip of a rectangular wing (NACA 0018 section). The winglets, with an aspect ratio of 3.6, were mounted on a half-span wing having an aspect ratio of 3.1. Twenty configurations of varying dihedral arrangements were analyzed with a vortex lattice method and tested in a low-speed wind tunnel at a Reynolds number of 600,000. In general, the arrangements involving high dihedral angles had lower performance increments, due to lower lift and higher interference drag. More specifically, the results showed that the winglets placed at 60, 45, and 30 degrees, respectively, produced nominal 4% higher lift and 46% lower drag. The most dramatic findings from this study show that positioning the winglet dihedral angles had the result of adjusting the point of maximum L/D and the magnitude of the pitching moment coefficient. These observations suggest that multiple winglet dihedral changes affect the lift, drag, and pitching moment in such a way that they are feasible for use as actively-controlled surfaces to improve the performance of aircraft at various flight conditions and to “tune” the longitudinal stability characteristics of the wing.Copyright © 2005 by ASME

D. S. Miklosovic

Papers

An Analytic and Experimental Investigation of the Aerodynamic Performance Enhancements of Multiple Winglet Configurations