Fundamentals of Modern Unsteady Aerodynamics

Ülgen Gülçat

Fundamentals of Modern
Unsteady Aerodynamics
Third Edition

123
Ülgen Gülçat
Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Istanbul Technical University
İstanbul, Turkey

ISBN 978-3-030-60776-0 ISBN 978-3-030-60777-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60777-7

1st and 2nd editions: © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2010, 2016
3rd edition: © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from
the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard
to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface to the Third Edition

The second edition of this book was made available on the shelves and also as an
e-book about a half a decade ago. Since then, there have been quite a few contri-
butions to the field concerning the unsteady applications of the flapping wing
technology. This made it necessary to add to the book a new chapter, Chap. 9,
under the title of Unsteady Applications related to the thrust optimization, aero-
dynamic stability and trim.
The thrust optimization applications cover the constraints on the magnitude
of the motion and the aerodynamic efficiency, optimization of the efficiency and
non-sinusoidal path optimization for the flapping. Furthermore, topics covered are
the optimum thrust at zero free-stream and the optimum power extraction from the
flapping motion of a windmill turbine.
The state space representation is implemented for the fast and efficient prediction
of the unsteady air loads, which are present in the equations of motion used for
flight dynamics. The relevant stability derivatives contain the state variables related
to the pitch and the pitch rate in a coupled manner with the linear and the rotational
acceleration terms of the motion respectively. The time averaged stability matrix is
used for the determination of the trimming for a given flapping motion. In hover,
however, trim is possible only if the flapping is anti-symmetric with full unsteady
aerodynamics. On the other hand, by implementing the quasi-steady aerodynamics,
trim is possible also with symmetric flapping. The validity of the results obtained is
discussed in detail in Chap. 9.
Additional material is presented in the Appendix for evaluating the stability
derivatives so that no derivation of equations is left incomplete but not overdone in
the text.
Needless to say, in the second edition there were a few typographical errors
which have been detected and corrected for the third edition.
Dr. Christoph Baumann read the most recent material and took the necessary
steps for the third edition, R. P. Chandrasekar and B. Sreenivasan prepared the
chapters for processing. Bayram Çelik helped me for the online correction after

v
vi Preface to the Third Edition

proof reading. My wife Zeliha, once again, stood by me and help me for down-
loading and printing the whole book. I would also like to express my gratitude and
appreciation to all who made this publication possible.

İstanbul, Turkey Ülgen Gülçat

July 2020
Preface to the Second Edition

The first edition of this book appeared in the fall of 2010 both as a hard copy and
e-book. Since then there has appeared in literature numerous unsteady aerody-
namics related material, which deserves to be presented in a graduate textbook.
Most of the new material is relevant to Chapter 8: Modern Topics. Here, a calcu-
lation method for propulsive force, lift generation and induced drag of a
pitching-plunging thin finite wing is provided with a numerical example as an
additional material. The unsteady 3-D Boundary Layer solution technique is
introduced for prediction of the viscous drag to see if the propulsive force over-
comes the drag. In addition, the ground effect on the air vehicles performing near
ground is formulated to see how the lift and the propulsive forces are altered for the
high and low aspect ratio wings.
The state-space representation of aerodynamics was introduced briefly in the first
edition. In the present edition, more detailed discussion of the method is provided
via numerical solutions for airfoils and finite wings of various aspect ratios even in
the presence of ground.
Additional material, including bio-inspired and biological flows, related to the
unsteady flows is also provided at the end of Chapter 9 to emphasize on the present
developments and future prospects.
Some more material is added to Appendix so that no derivation of equations is
left incomplete but not overdone in the text.
Needless to say, in the first edition there was a few typographical errors which
are detected and corrected for the second edition.
Dr. Christoph Baumann read the new material and took the necessary steps for
the second edition, and K. M. Govardhana prepared the metadata of the book.
Mehmet Tan provided the figure for the cover page. My wife Zeliha, once more,
stood by me in all these times with great patience. Finally, I would like to express
my gratitude and appreciation to all who made publication of the book possible.

İstanbul Ülgen Gülçat

July 2015

vii
Preface to the First Edition

The flying animate objects were present in earth’s atmosphere about hundreds of
million years before the appearance of human kind on earth. Only at the beginning
of 20th century, the proper analysis of the lifting force was made to provide the
possibility of powered and manned flight. Prior to that, one of the pioneers of
mechanics, Sir Isaac Newton had used ‘his impact theory’ in an attempt to for-
mulate the lifting force created on a body immersed in a free stream. In late 17th
century, his theory was a failure due to calculation of insufficient lift generation and
made him come to the conclusion that ‘flying is a property of heavenly bodies’. In a
similar manner, almost after two centuries, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) whose
contributions to thermo and gas dynamics are well known, then proved that ‘only
objects lighter than air’ can fly!
Perhaps it was the adverse influence of these two pioneers of mechanics on
Western Europe, where contributions to the discipline of hydrodynamics is
unquestionable, that delayed the true analysis of the lift generation. The proper
analysis of lifting force, on the other hand, was independently made at the onset of
20th century by the theoretical aerodynamicists Martin Kutta and Nicolai
Joukowski of Central and Eastern Europe respectively. At about the same years, the
Wright brothers, whose efforts on powered flight were ridiculed by authorities
of their time, were able to fly a short distance. Thereafter, in a time interval little
more than a century, which is a considerably short span compared to the dawn of
civilization, we see not only tens of thousands of aircrafts flying in earth’s atmo-
sphere at a given moment but we also witnessed unmanned or manned missions to
the moon, missions to almost every planet in our solar system and to deeper space
to let the existence of life on earth be known by the other possible intelligent life
forms.
The foundation of the century old discipline of aeronautics and astronautics
undoubtedly lies in the progress made in aerodynamics. The improvement made on
the aerodynamics of wings, based on satisfying the Kutta condition at the trailing
edge to give a circulation necessary for lift generation, was so rapid that in less than
a quarter century it led to the breaking of the sound barrier and to the discovery of
sustainable supersonic flight, which was unprecedented in nature and once thought

ix
x Preface to the First Edition

to be not possible! In many engineering applications involving motion we

encounter either forced or velocity induced oscillatory motion at high speeds. If the
changes in the excitations are rapid, the response of the system lags considerably.
Similarly, the response of the aerodynamic systems cannot be determined using
steady aerodynamics for rapidly changing excitations. The unsteady aerodynamics,
on the other hand, has sufficient tools to give accurately the phase lag between the
rapid motion change and the response of the aerodynamic system. As we observe
the performances of perfect aerodynamic structures of nature, we understand the
effect of unsteady phenomena to such an extent that lift can be generated with
apparent mass even without a free stream. In some cases, when the classical
unsteady aerodynamics does not suffice, we go beyond the conventional concepts,
with observing nature again, to utilize the extra lift created by the suction force of
strong vorticies shed from the sharp leading edge of low aspect ratio wings at high
angles of attack. We implement this fact in designing highly maneuverable aircrafts
at high angles of attack and low free stream velocities. If we go to angles of attack
higher than this, we observe aerodynamically induced but undesirable unsteady
phenomena called wing rock. In addition, quite recently the progress made in
unsteady aerodynamics integrated with electronics enable us to design and operate
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) based on flapping wing technology having radio
controlled devices.
This book, which gives the progress made in unsteady aerodynamics in about
less than a century, is written to be used as a graduate textbook in Aerospace
Engineering. Another important aim of this work is to provide the project engineers
with the foundations as well as the knowledge needed about the most recent
developments involving unsteady aerodynamics. This need emerges from the fact
that the design and the analysis tools used by the research engineers are treated as
black boxes providing results with inadequate information about the theory as well
as practice. In addition, the models of complex aerodynamic flows and their
solution methodologies are provided with examples, and enhanced with problems
and questions asked at the end of each chapter. Unlike this full text, the recent
developments made in unsteady aerodynamics together with the fundamentals have
not appeared as a textbook except in some chapters of books on aeroelasticity or
helicopter dynamics!
The classical parts of this book are mainly based on ‘not so terribly advanced’
lecture notes of Alvin G. Pierce and basics of vortex aerodynamics knowledge
provided by James C. Wu while I was a PhD student at Georgia Tech. What was
then difficult to conceive and visualize because of the involvement of special
functions, now, thanks to the software allowing symbolic operations and versatile
numerical techniques, is quite simple to solve and analyze even on our PCs.
Although the problems become more challenging and demanding by time, how-
ever, the development of novel technologies and methods render them possible to
solve provided that the fundamentals are well taught and understood by well
informed users. The modern subjects covered in the book are based on the lecture
notes of ‘Unsteady Aerodynamics’ courses offered by me for the past several years
at Istanbul Technical University.
Preface to the First Edition xi

The first five chapters of the book are on the classical topics whereas the rest
covers the modern topics, and the outlook and the possible future developments
finalize the book. The examples provided at each chapter are helpful in terms of
application of relevant material, and the problems at the end of each chapter are
useful for the reader towards understanding of the subject matter and its future
usage. The main idea to be delivered in each chapter is given as a verbal summary
at chapters’ end together with the most up to date references. There are ten
Appendixes appearing to supplement the formulae driven without distracting the
uniformity of the text.
I had the opportunity of reusing and borrowing some material from the publi-
cations of Joseph Katz, AIAA, NATO-AGARD/RTO and Annual Review of Fluid
Mechanics with their kind copyright permissions. Dr. Christoph Baumann read the
text and made the necessary arrangements for its publication by Springer. Zeliha
Gülçat and Canan Danışman provided me with their kind help in editing the entire
text. N. Thiyagarajan prepared the metadata of the book. Aydın Mısırlıoğlu and
Fırat Edis helped me in transferring the graphs into word documents. I did the
typing of the book, and obtained most of the graphs and plots despite the ‘carpal
tunnel syndrome’ caused by the intensive usage of the mouse. Furthermore, heavy
concentration on subject matter and continuous work hours spent on the text
showed itself as developing ‘shingles’! My wife Zeliha stood by me in all these
difficult times with great patience. I would like to extend my gratitude, once more,
to all who contributed to the realization of this book.

Datça and İstanbul Ülgen Gülçat

August 2010
Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Generation of Lift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Unsteady Lifting Force Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Steady Aerodynamics of Thin Wings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5 Unsteady Aerodynamics of Slender Wings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.6 Compressible Steady Aerodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.7 Compressible Unsteady Aerodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.8 Slender Body Aerodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.9 Hypersonic Aerodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.10 The Piston Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.11 Modern Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.12 Questions and Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2 Fundamental Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1 Equation of Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2 Boundary Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.3 Linearization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.4 Acceleration Potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.5 Moving Coordinate System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.6 System and Control Volume Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.7 Global Continuity and the Continuity of the Species . . . . . . . . . 40
2.8 Momentum Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.9 Energy Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.10 Equation of Motion in General Coordinates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.11 Navier-Stokes Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.12 Thin Shear Layer Navier-Stokes Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.13 Parabolized Navier-Stokes Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.14 Boundary Layer Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

xiii
xiv Contents

2.15 Incompressible Flow Navier-Stokes Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

2.16 Aerodynamic Forces and Moments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.17 Turbulence Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.18 Initial and Boundary Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.19 Questions and Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3 Incompressible Flow About an Airfoil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.1 Impulsive Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.2 Steady Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.3 Unsteady Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.4 Simple Harmonic Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.5 Loewy’s Problem: Returning Wake Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.6 Arbitrary Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.7 Questions and Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4 Incompressible Flow About Thin Wings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.1 Physical Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.2 Steady Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4.3 Unsteady Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.4 Arbitrary Motion of a Thin Wing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.5 Effect of Sweep Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.6 Low Aspect Ratio Wing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.7 Questions and Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
5 Subsonic and Supersonic Flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5.1 Subsonic Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.2 Subsonic Flow About a Thin Wing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.3 Subsonic Flow Past an Airfoil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.4 Kernel Function Method for Subsonic Flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.5 Doublet—Lattice Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.6 Arbitrary Motion of a Profile in Subsonic Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.7 Supersonic Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
5.8 Unsteady Supersonic Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
5.9 Supersonic Flow About a Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
5.10 Supersonic Flow About Thin Wings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
5.11 Mach Box Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
5.12 Supersonic Kernel Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
5.13 Arbitrary Motion of a Profile in Supersonic Flow . . . . . . . . . . . 174
5.14 Slender Body Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
5.15 Munk’s Airship Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
5.16 Questions and Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Contents xv

6 Transonic Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

6.1 Two Dimensional Transonic Flow, Local Linearization . . . . . . . 185
6.2 Unsteady Transonic Flow, Supersonic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
6.3 Steady Transonic Flow, Non Linear Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
6.4 Unsteady Transonic Flow: General Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
6.5 Transonic Flow Around a Finite Wing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
6.6 Unsteady Transonic Flow Past Finite Wings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
6.7 Wing-Fuselage Interactions at Transonic Regimes . . . . . . . . . . . 204
6.8 Problems and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
7 Hypersonic Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
7.1 Newton’s Impact Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
7.2 Improved Newton’s Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
7.3 Unsteady Newtonian Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
7.4 The Piston Analogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
7.5 Improved Piston Theory: M2 s2 = O(1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
7.6 Inviscid Hypersonic Flow: Numerical Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
7.7 Viscous Hypersonic Flow and Aerodynamic Heating . . . . . . . . 231
7.8 High Temperature Effects in Hypersonic Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
7.9 Hypersonic Viscous Flow: Numerical Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
7.10 Hypersonic Plane: Wave Rider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
7.11 Problems and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
8 Modern Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
8.1 Static Stall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
8.2 Dynamic Stall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
8.3 The Vortex Lift (Polhamus Theory) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
8.4 Wing Rock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
8.5 Flapping Wing Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
8.6 Flexible Airfoil Flapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
8.7 Finite Wing Flapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
8.8 Ground Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
8.9 State-Space Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
8.10 Problems and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
9 Unsteady Applications: Thrust Optimization, Stability and Trim . . . . 351
9.1 Thrust Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
9.2 Thrust Optimization with Non-linear Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
9.3 Stability and Trim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
xvi Contents

10 Aerodynamics: The Outlook for the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

Appendices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431