In the context of building a framework for active flow control of turbulent boundary layers in wings, a set of large-eddy simulation (LES) are implemented in OpenFOAM. The flow around a NACA4412 wing profile is simulated at 5° angle of attack and Re_c = 400˙000. Validation of the uncontrolled flow results is performed with respect to the dataset generated by Vinuesa et al. (2018) at the same aerodynamic configuration. Afterwards, two different flow control strategies are analyzed over the suction side (SS) of the wing to yield skin friction drag reduction and an overall improvement of the aerodynamic efficiency. The region subject to the actuation spans 0.25 x_ss/c to 0.:86 x_ss/c, where c is the chord length of the wing. In the current setup, uniform blowing (BLW) and suction (SCT) control schemes show close agreement with the trends presented by Atzori (2021). Indeed, BLW decreases the viscous drag, but increases its pressure contribution and penalizes the lift, thus lowering the global efficiency of the wing, while SCT has an opposite effect. Thus, these methods behave similarly to pressure gradients (PGs) conditions, as BLW enhances the APG, whereas SCT damps it. The streamwise travelling waves strategy is then assessed for three set-ups characterized by different phase speeds. A consistent skin friction drag reduction and efficiency improvement are observed for two cases, while milder benefits are recorded even when drag increase was expected. Trends which have already been reported in the literature by Quadrio et al. (2009) and Skote (2014) are identified, i.e. the effects of this actuation to be mainly enclosed in the viscous sub-layer and the gross amount of drag reduction to be dependent on the wave relative speed; however, it is believed that the PGs conditions over the SS of the wing significantly alters the outcomes of the chosen parameters. Eventually, Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations are performed to assess their accuracy with respect to the generated LES set-up, in the effort to enable a multi-fidelity approach for future works.

The details of an experimental investigation focusing on obtaining the static and vibration characteristics of a full-scale carbon composite wing and fuselage structural assemblies of an ultralight unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are presented. The UAV has a total empty weight of 155-lb and an overall length of approximately 20.6t. A three-tier whiffletree system and the tail fixture were designed and used to load the wing and the fuselage in a manner consistent with a high-g flight condition. A shaker-table approach was used for the wing vibration testing, whereas the modal characteristics of the fuselage structure were determined for a freeree configuration. The static responses of the both structures under simulated loading conditions as well as their dynamic properties such as the natural frequency, damping coefficient and associated mode shapes were obtained. The design and implementation of the static and vibration tests along with the experimental results are presented in this thesis.

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No description available.

Youth wings exist worldwide, connect youths with political parties, and mobilize youth to political engagement. Youth wings engagement often entails offline political engagement such as debates and demonstrations. However, during the two-year pandemic, youth wings and their members had to move their political engagement mostly online since they and the rest of the world needed to conduct social distancing to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The pandemic ended this year, 2022, and studies have been conducted around political engagement during social distancing. However, no study has researched how the digitalization effect of the pandemic has affected youths' wings and its member's online mobilization and engagement. This study intends, therefore, to study how the eight Swedish youth wing and their members view how their online mobilization and political engagement during the pandemic has changed. Therefore, to understand the youth wings and its members' political mobilization and engagement does the study use semi-structured interviews to gain a subjective understanding of their perspectives. The data was then analyzed through thematic analysis and later theoretical examined through the dimensions of political engagement and mobilization and the private sphere. Finally, these theories were applied to the data to understand what actions can be viewed as political mobilization and engagement and how digital media affect political actions. Youth wings exist worldwide and connect youths with political parties and mobilize youth to political engagement. Youth wings engagement often entails offline political engagement such as debates and demonstrations. However, during the two-year pandemic, youth wings and their members had to move their political engagement mostly online since they and the rest of the world needed to conduct social distancing to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The pandemic ended this year, 2022, and studies have been conducted around political engagement during social distancing. However, no study has researched how the digitalization effect of the pandemic has affected youths' wings and its member's online mobilization and engagement. This study intends, therefore, to study how the eight Swedish youth wing and their members view how their online mobilization and political engagement during the pandemic has changed. Therefore, to understand the youth wings and its members' political mobilization and engagement does the study use semi-structured interviews to gain a subjective understanding of their perspectives. The data was then analyzed through thematic analysis and later theoretical examined through the dimensions of political engagement and mobilization and the private sphere. Finally, these theories were applied to the data to understand what actions can be viewed as political mobilization and engagement and how digital media affect political actions.

In this dissertation, neural networks are designed to effectively model static non-linear aeroelastic problems in adaptive structures and linear dynamic aeroelastic systems with time varying stiffness. The use of adaptive materials in aircraft wings allows for the change of the contour or the configuration of a wing (morphing) in flight. The use of smart materials, to accomplish these deformations, can imply that the stiffness of the wing with a morphing contour changes as the contour changes. For a rapidly oscillating body in a fluid field, continuously adapting structural parameters may render the wing to behave as a time variant system. Even the internal spars/ribs of the aircraft wing which define the wing stiffness can be made adaptive, that is, their stiffness can be made to vary with time. The immediate effect on the structural dynamics of the wing, is that, the wing motion is governed by a differential equation with time varying coefficients. The study of this concept of a time varying torsional stiffness, made possible by the use of active materials and adaptive spars, in the dynamic aeroelastic behavior of an adaptable airfoil is performed here. A time marching technique is developed for solving linear structural dynamic problems with time-varying parameters. This time-marching technique borrows from the concept of Time-Finite Elements in the sense that for each time interval considered in the time-marching, an analytical solution is obtained. The analytical solution for each time interval is in the form of a matrix exponential and hence this technique is termed as Matrix Exponential time marching. Using this time marching technique, Artificial Neural Networks can be trained to represent the dynamic behavior of any linearly time varying system. In order to extend this methodology to dynamic aeroelasticity, it is also necessary to model the unsteady aerodynamic loads over an airfoil. Accordingly, an unsteady aerodynamic panel method is developed using a distributed set of doublet panels over the surface of the airfoil and along its wake. When the aerodynamic loads predicted by this panel method are made available to the Matrix Exponential time marching scheme for every time interval, a dynamic aeroelastic solver for a time varying aeroelastic system is obtained. This solver is now used to train an array of neural networks to represent the response of this two dimensional aeroelastic system with a time varying torsional stiffness. These neural networks are developed into a control system for flutter suppression. Another type of aeroelastic problem of an adaptive structure that is investigated here is the shape control of an adaptive bump situated on the leading edge of an airfoil. Such a bump is useful in achieving flow separation control for lateral directional maneuverability of the aircraft. Since actuators are being used to create this bump on the wing surface, the energy required to do so needs to be minimized. The adverse pressure drag as a result of this bump needs to be controlled so that the loss in lift over the wing is made minimal. The design of such a "spoiler bump" on the surface of the airfoil is an optimization problem of maximizing pressure drag due to flow separation while minimizing the loss in lift and energy required to deform the bump. One neural network is trained using the CFD code FLUENT to represent the aerodynamic loading over the bump. A second neural network is trained for calculating the actuator loads, bump displacement and lift, drag forces over the airfoil using the finite element solver, ANSYS and the previously trained neural network. This non-linear aeroelastic model of the deforming bump on an airfoil surface using neural networks can serve as a fore-runner for other non-linear aeroelastic problems. This work enhances the traditional aeroelastic modeling by introducing time varying parameters in the differential equations of motion. It investigates the calculation of non-conservative aerodynamic loads on morphing contours and the resulting structural deformation for non-linear aeroelastic problems through the use of neural networks. Geometric modeling of morphing contours is also addressed. / Ph. D.

A Numerical Solution is presented for the problem of flow past a highly swept, slender wing with sharp leading edges. The lifting surface is modelled as a bound vortex sheet, while the wake is modelled as a force-free vortex sheet. The solution is obtained by the use of a unsteady Vortex-Lattice Method which includes the effect of leading edge separation. Numerical predictions for the aerodynamic loads and pressure distributions are compared with experimental data. A 75° Delta wing and a 60° Delta wing with Leading Edge Vortex flaps in uniform, symmetric and steady flow are studied. Uniform and cosine distributions are used to determine the effect of lattice shape on the solution. The results show that good aerodynamic load predictions are obtained by this Vortex-lattice method. The results also indicated that fewer cosine distribution control points predict pressures as well as the use of a larger number of uniform distribution control points. The numerical results for wings with LEVFs show good agreement with experimental data away from the trailing edge. This may be due to the viscous effects in the experiment not modelled in this method. It is also apparent that the size of the wake, trailing and leading edge wakes, is the important factor effecting computation times. / M.S.

The interactions of trailing vortex pairs shed from the tips of two rectangular wings have been studied through helium bubble flow visualizations and extensive hot wire velocity measurements made between 10 and 30 chord lengths downstream. The wings were placed tip to tip at equal and opposite angles of attack, generating pairs of co-rotating and counter rotating vortices. Meaningful hot wire measurements could be made because the vortices were found to be insensitive to probe interference and experienced very small wandering motions. The co-rotating pairs were observed to rotate around each other and merge. Upstream of the merging location, the vortices have approximately elliptical cores. These are surrounded by the two wing wakes which join together around the two cores. Flow in the vicinity of the cores appears fully developed. During the merging process, the cores rotate rapidly about each other, winding the wing wakes into a fine spiral structure. Merger roughly doubles the core size and appears to produce turbulence over abroad range of frequencies. The counter rotating pairs move sideways under their mutual induction and slightly apart; their flow structure changing little with downstream location. These cores remain fairly circular and do not become fully developed within 30 chord lengths of the measurements. / Master of Science

The aircraft industry has long been concerned with the increase of drag on airplanes due to fouling of the wings by insects. The present research studied the effects of surface energy and surface roughness on the phenomenon of insect sticking. Aluminum plates of different roughnesses were coated with thin films of polymers with varying surface energies. The coated plates were attached to a custom jig and mounted on top of an automobile for insect collection. Contact angle measurements, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and specular reflectance infrared spectroscopy were used to characterize the surfaces before and after the insect impact experiments. Scanning electron microscopy showed the topography of insect residues on the exposed plates. Moments were calculated in order to find a correlation between the parameters studied and the amount of bugs collected on the plates. An effect of surface energy on the sticking of insect residues was demonstrated. / M.S.

This aircraft industry is concerned with the increase of drag on planes due to the sticking of insects on critical airfoil areas. The objectives of the present study were to investigate the effects of surface energy and elasticity on the number of insects sticking onto the polymer coatings on a modified aircraft wing and to determine the mechanism by which insects stick onto surfaces during a high-Velocity impact. Analyses including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA) and contact angle measurements of uncoated and polymer-coated aluminum surfaces have been performed. An air-gun was designed to accelerate insects to high speeds and impact them onto modified wing surfaces in a laboratory environment. A direct relation between the number of insects sticking on a sample and its surface energy was obtained. Since the sticky liquid from a burst-open insect will not spread on the low energy surface, it will ball up providing poor adhesion between the insect debris and the surface. The incoming air How can easily blow oH' the insect debris thus reducing the number of insects that remain stuck on the surface. Also a direct relation between the number of insect sticking onto sample surfaces and their moduli of elasticity was obtained. The deceleration of an insect impacting onto an elastomer reduces in proportional to the modulus of elasticity of the material. As a consequence, the rate of change of momentum is lower and the force and pressure exerted on the body of the insect is reduced if it impacts onto a material with a low modulus of elasticity. This lessens the chance of bursting the i insect exoskeleton. / Master of Science