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Browsing Research Publications/Outputs by browse.metadata.impactarea "Aerospace Systems"
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Item Aerodynamic design of an electronics pod to maximise its carriage envelope on a fast-jet aircraft(2024-12) Du Rand, R; Jamison, Kevin K; Huyssen, BarbaraThe purpose of this paper is to reshape a fast-jet electronics pod’s external geometry to ensure compliance with aircraft pylon load limits across its carriage envelope while adhering to onboard system constraints and fitment specifications. Initial geometric layout determination used empirical methods. Performance approximation on the aircraft with added fairings and stabilising fin configurations was conducted using a panel code. Verification of loads was done using a full steady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes solver, validated against published wind tunnel test data. Acceptable load envelope for the aircraft pylon was defined using two already-certified stores with known flight envelopes. Re-lofting the pod’s geometry enabled meeting all geometric and pylon load constraints. However, due to the pod's large size, re-lofting alone was not adequate to respect aircraft/pylon load limitations. A flight restriction was imposed on the aircraft’s roll rate to reduce yaw and roll moments within allowable limits. The geometry of an electronics pod was redesigned to maximise the permissible flight envelope on its carriage aircraft while respecting the safe carriage load limits determined for its store pylon. Aircraft carriage load constraints must be determined upfront when considering the design of fast-jet electronic pods. A process for determining the unknown load constraints of a carriage aircraft by analogy is presented, along with the process of tailoring the geometry of an electronics pod to respect aerodynamic load and geometric constraints.Item Flutter clearance techniques and tools for gliders(2024-08) Van Zyl, Louwrens HThe flutter clearance of gliders pose some special challenges. Modal frequencies are low, making suspension of the glider for ground vibration testing challenging. The low frequencies also make large amplitudes of excitation desirable. In flutter flight testing space for excitation systems and telemetry systems is limited.Item On the existence of a family of ideal aircraft configurations(2024-09) Huyssen, Reinhard J; Spedding, GRThe bulk of fossil fuel in aviation is consumed in the domain of fixed-wing subsonic flight. Environmental concerns put strong incentives on the industry to improve flight efficiency. Best flight efficiency can only be attained if an aircraft design is based on its ideal configuration. Already since the middle of the previous century, the industry became entrenched in the tube-and-wings configuration, here referred to as the Current Dominant Configuration (CDC). It is widely speculated that better arrangements of wings and bodies exist, and many research initiatives are dedicated to the exploration of alternatives. These are typically done for specific types of aircraft, mostly for the airline industry. Yet, new aircraft developments keep employing the CDC as if proposed alternatives are ignored. Here a hypothesis is tested which suggests that a single family of aircraft configurations exists which is ideal for the majority of economically significant flight objectives within this domain. To organise the aircraft design space into families of configurations, a hypothetical Ideal Wing is introduced as a common basis from which all configurations evolve by inflation to provide practical flyers with volume for their payload. While the most prominent configurations, including the CDC, appear to disqualify as candidates for the proposed ideal configuration, the one which qualifies, has not been seriously examined in human aviation, although it is familiar. Termed the Natural Dominant Configuration, as it appears in natural flyers, it certainly merits further exploration.Item The effect of combustor hole-set arrangement when comparing two different hole-set design methods(2024-07) Meyers, Bronwyn C; Grobler, Jan-HendrikThis presentation focuses on the effect of combustor hole-set arrangement when comparing two different hole-set design methods.