Investigation of wind tunnel wall effect and wing-fuselage interference regarding the prediction of wing aerodynamics and its influence on the horizontal tail

The calculation of aerodynamic characteristics of a wing is the basic problem for aerodynamic design of aircraft. Wing aerodynamics can be determined experimentally and numerically. The method of fixing the wing in the test chamber of wind tunnel is related to disturbance of flow through the wing. When the wing is entirely fixed in the test chamber, the disturbance is usually caused by the sting connecting the wing to the test chamber. The experiments in this paper fixed the wing by clamping to the wind tunnel wall at the wing symmetry surface (root section). With this wing fixation, it was possible to take advantage of the wingspan twice, but to obtain the 3D wing experiment results, it was necessary to evaluate the impact of the wind tunnel wall effect. As for aircrafts, the aerodynamic force of the aircraft’s wing will have certain difference than that of the wing alone. The intersection region between the wind tunnel wall and wing root (for the experiment), as well as between the fuselage and wing root have complex interactions of boundary layers, in particular separation phenomena in the boundary layers. By solving the differential equation for viscous flows, it was possible to visualize the picture of streamlines and flow separations in this interference region and the aerodynamic characteristics of the wing. The singularity method was also used to compare results within its application range. The aerodynamic coefficients in the two cases with and without interference were analyzed. Complex interactions in the interference region could alter the predicted aerodynamic force calculated for the wing alone, which should be estimated. Very strong separations in the wing-fuselage interference region at large angles of attack turned into vortices at the rear impacting on the horizontal tail aerodynamics that is related to the balance problem of the aircraft.