Study on the influence of wing deformation on the aerodynamic performance of paragliders

The objective of this work is the computational analysis of the in-flight deformation of a commercial paraglider wing and its impact on the aerodynamic performance. Particular emphasis will be given to the so-called ovalization of the wing cells, which changes the airfoil shape between ribs and the aerodynamic response of the sections. The study will be carried out using the software PARACHUTES, which is a low-order coupled simulation software designed for fast practical analysis. The goal of this work is to compute the performance of a paragliding wing taking into account thein-flight shape deformation. To this end, a fluid-structure solution approach combining inviscidaerodynamics with viscous corrections is adopted. The computer program Parachutes (basedon a Panel Method) is used to find the potential lift distribution. Then, this value is correctedusing the 2D viscous polars of each airfoil section across the span. Since the wing pressure can deform the geometry the airfoil sections change along the span. Thus, an extrapolationtechnique is developed to predict the polar curves of the deformed sections taking as a reference the undeformed (original) shape. To do so, a parametric study is carried out in order to find the most common deformation mechanisms and the effects they have on the airfoil aerodynamics