The Cluster of Excellence SE²A - Sustainable and Energy Efficient Aviation is a DFG-funded interdisciplinary research center investigating technologies for a sustainable and eco-friendly air transport system. Scientists from engineering, economics, chemistry and biology are working on the reduction of drag, emissions and noise, life-cycle concepts for airframes, improvements in air traffic management and new technologies for energy storage and conversion. Technische Universität (TU) Braunschweig, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Leibniz University Hannover (LUH), the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) and the National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB) have joined forces in this extraordinary scientific undertaking. Additional information about the cluster can be found on the homepage www.tu-braunschweig.de/se2a. The overall project is structured into the three core research areas "Assessment of the Air Transport System", "Flight Physics and Vehicle Systems" and "Energy Storage & Conversion".
As part of the Cluster of Excellence, four Junior Research Groups (JRG) have been established with different focus areas. The JRG "Flow Physics of Load Reduction" is part of the core research area "System Platforms". Based on conceptual design studies, drastic reductions of maneuver loads and gust loads offer large gains on the overall aircraft level. Leveraging these gains for future aircraft calls for new knowledge on aerodynamic means to re-distribute or suppress aerodynamic loads on the wing. The objective is to substantiate feasibility of efficient and rapid means of load redistributions, aiming for load envelopes corresponding to less than 1.5g loads for maneuvers and gust encounters. The JRG is comprised of the lead and 2 doctoral researchers, funded initially for 4 years as part of the overall project. The group works in close collaboration with related research efforts in the field of new aircraft system architectures for load control.
Aircraft wings are subject to dynamic loads caused by unsteady gusts and flight maneuvers, which reduce passenger comfort and induce structural wing deformations that are typically countered by sturdier and, consequently, heavier wing designs. To reduce the wing weight, gust and maneuver load alleviation systems are already in use in today's aircraft, where they dynamically actuate existing control surfaces like ailerons or elevators to alter the wing lift distribution during an unsteady load encounter. These systems, however, suffer from the relatively slow response of conventional control surfaces and therefore cannot exploit the full potential of gust and maneuver load alleviation.
This project will contribute to the development of a new generation of Active Load Reduction systems by investigating dedicated flow actuators that have the potential to provide fast and efficient lift redistribution over the entire wingspan. The graph to the right shows an example for multiple potential flow actuation systems, their integration into the wing and how the system can manipulate lift across the entire wing span.
The JRG on "Flow Physics of Load Reduction" will conduct unsteady flow simulations and wind tunnel tests for flow control on 2D wing segments and 3D wings of finite span for a range of actuation and geometric parameters. The preliminary work plan is shown in the chart below. PhD-Researcher Position 1 focuses on numerical flow simulations of subsonic and transonic wings, while PhD-Researcher Position 2 applies both experimental and numerical methods to study subsonic wing flow.