Preliminary Analysis of a Wing in High-Lift Configuration and Application of Alternative Slat Settings to Improve its Performances

Within this work numerical investigations on the aerodynamics of a wing in high-lift configuration have been carried out in order to optimize the position for the deployed slat so as to improve the wing performances in take-off and landing configuration. The work has been carried out performing at first 2D CFD studies on selected sections of the reference wing. At this stage some trend studies were also carried out to assess whether turbulence models and some other numerical parameters caused any inconsistency in the results. The work continued optimizing the performance of one wing section. The optimum slat position was then applied to the 3D wing model and, finally, a comparison between the 3D reference wing and the 3D new wing has been carried out. This thesis documents a work done during the last six months of an internship of the duration of one year in the High-Lift Devices Team of the Flight Physics Department at Airbus Operations Limited, in the Filton site, near Bristol, UK. Since this work has been realized in an industry, it means that the tools, methodologies and the working procedures were established by best practice guidelines and it was not possible to modify any of these. For the Intellectual Property Rights, it is not possible to show sensible data, as for instance numerical values. For this reason the graphs and figures contained in this document show only qualitative trends without any reference to absolute numerical values; the only numerical values shown are the relative values compared to the reference geometry