DEFINITION:

  1. For aircraft, the design of powerplant installation aims to minimise the installation drag by avoiding the separation on the pylon or on the wing in all the flight envelope, particularly at low lift coefficient. New installations are studied in order to reduce the noise, for example by engine location on the upper side of the wing or with semi-buried engines. Experimental tests on models in wind tunnels need to use TPS techniques for simulating the mass flow rate into the nacelle and its effect on the flow around the wing.
  2. For rotorcraft, the aims of the studies are to minimise the hub drag and the interaction drag and to reduce the aerodynamic noise. Some works concern the design of air intakes in relation to airflow through the rotor and of the nozzle in order to reduce the heat transfer on the rear part of the fuselage (infrared signature).
  3. For airbreathing missile, the air intakes are optimised to take in account some constraints of furtivity (RCS) and assume a good efficiency at high angle of attack. Some devices are necessary to prevent the separation of the flow on thin lips or in the S-shape diffuser.

(Source: ACARE Domain 103)

SUBDOMAINS:

  1. Computational Fluid Dynamics
  2. Wind Tunnel Testing
  3. Air Intake
  4. Nozzle
  5. Drag reduction
  6. Flow separation
  7. Air Flow control
  8. Infrared Signature
  9. Radar Signature
  10. Noise reduction