Low and High Fidelity Aerodynamic Simulations for Airborne Wind Energy Box Wings
Gabriel Buendía Vela (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Roland Schmehl – Mentor (TU Delft - Wind Energy)
D. Eijkelhof – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Wind Energy)
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Abstract
Airborne wind energy systems convert the kinetic energy of wind into usable power. In general terms, this power is proportional to the ratio CL3/CD2 of aerodynamic coefficients. From a structural perspective, the thickness-to-chord ratio of conventional AWE wings needs to be high to withstand the high aerodynamic loads. The box-wing concept opens the possibility of exploring a broader range of airfoils since structural loads can be redistributed with reinforcements between the two wings. This study aims to develop an automatic process for constructing a finite volume CFD mesh from a parametrized box-wing geometry, which is generally the most time-demanding part of CFD analysis. These analyses provide an accurate estimate of the viscous drag acting on box wing designs. In addition, this study aims to define a criterion of equivalence between a box wing and a conventional wing, and obtain the reference design by optimization using panel methods for fast aerodynamic computations. The aerodynamic tools used for this study are a steady panel method (APAME) and Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes simulations using a k-ω SST turbulence model (OpenFOAM). The computational framework is ultimately suitable for aero-structural optimization of a boxwing because of the high degree of automation and the reduced number of design parameters.