Electroactive morphing through spanwise travelling waves applied on an A320 wing by numerical simulation at Reynolds number 1 million

The effect of spanwise travelling wave (STW) morphing applied in the near trailing edge region of wings is investigated through High-Fidelity numerical simulations. This concept is part of the bioinspired electroactive morphing wings studies conducted in the context of the European research project HORIZON 2023–2027 PATHFINDER N°101129952 BEALIVE (“ Bioinspired Electroactive Aeronautical multiscale LIVE-skin ”). The numerical simulations were performed with the Navier-Stokes Multi Block (NSMB) solver, using the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method to account for the moving and deforming grid. The Organised Eddy Simulation (OES) turbulence modelling was employed to capture the dynamics of coherent structures. The configuration studied corresponds to an A320 wing in the low subsonic regime, with a chord of 70 cm , a span of 60 cm , a Mach number of 0.063 , an incidence of 10 ° and a Reynolds number of 1 million. Slight deformations and vibrations of the aerodynamic surface undergoing wall-normal periodic sinusoidal deflections are performed for an amplitude of 0.7 mm , for actuation frequencies in the range (40-400) Hz and with spanwise wavelengths in the range (3-60) c m . Analysis of the unactuated case provided the natural frequencies and wavelengths of the primary and secondary instability modes, enabling comparison of the modification of aerodynamic forces thanks to STW morphing. A drag reduction of 3.70% , a lift increase of 1.70% , and a lift-to-drag ratio increase of 4.60% were obtained, together with simultaneous reduction of the rms up to 50% . This was accompanied by a reduction in spectral amplitude of up to 14 dB for the predominant shear layers interaction mode, and up to 30 dB for the harmonics of the von Kármán and shear layers natural frequencies, significantly reducing noise sources.