Basic Aerodynamics – spring 2020

Assignment 2
The purpose of this assignment is to use lifting-line theory to determine the aerodynamics properties
of planar wings.

Consider a rectangular planar wing consisting of NACA 4415 airfoil sections. The lift coefficient
for 2D airfoil sections are measured to be Cl  0.11 (  40 ) , where  denotes the angle of attack in
degrees.

2.1 Employ the fundamental equation of Prandtl’s lifting-line theory to determine the distribution of
induced angle of attack along the wing for different aspect ratios, AR, and geometric angles of
attack, AOA. Plot the distributions for AR = 4, 6, 8, 10 and AOA = 00, 50, 100. Compute the
corresponding induced drag and lift coefficients, CL and CDi , and put the values into tables (one for
each AOA).

2.2 Compute the induced angle of attack and induced drag coefficient for an elliptic wing with the
same aspect ratios and geometric angles of attack. Compare and discuss the solutions.

2.3 Consider now a tapered wing of aspect ratio AR = 6 and an angle of attack, AOA = 60. The taper
c
ratio is defined as the ratio between the length of the tip chord and the mid chord, TR  tip .
croot
In the following the taper ratio is taken as a parameter with values TR = 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0.

Compute and plot the distributions of dimensionless circulation,   , where U  denotes the
U c
inflow velocity and c is the mean chord length, and the induced angle of attack  i  deg  , as
y
functions of the span wise coordinate, y  .
b

2.4 Compute the corresponding induced drag and lift coefficients, CDi and CL , respectively, for the
tapered wing configuration of question 2.3.

2.5 Compute the relative difference of induced drag between an elliptic wing and a tapered wing for
CD  CDi ,elliptic
the different taper ratios, CD  i . Please note that this comparison only makes sense
CDi ,elliptic
when the wings are operating at the same CL -values.

In the report you are expected to give the necessary information for explaining what you did and
also to discuss the validity of the obtained results. You should not derive equations, but show those
that are important for understanding what you are doing. Remember to attach the MatLab script in
the appendix when uploading the report on CampusNet.