Morphology development of an airfoil by numerical analysis

As aerial application is not quite feasible for small croplands with current aircrafts in the market, because their higher operational speed. An adequate solution is to generate morphology in the airfoil of the wing of an aircraft, that would allow to decrease the operational speed of the aircraft by increasing the lift that the wing can generate at lower speed without the issue of reach the stall speed. Different airfoils were evaluated in order to compare their characteristics of high-lift and low Reynolds number with those of the NACA 4415, which is the current airfoil of the chosen agricultural aircraft. Such evaluation was carried out by numerical analysis in two dimensions, using Computational Fluid Dynamics software (CFD) at the same air conditions. It is observed that some airfoils obtain much better lift, compare with the base airfoil, but the geometry became very complex. The GOE 449 airfoil was selected due to the minimum geometric changes to do in order to perform the morphology from the original airfoil obtaining 26% more lift. In order to obtain the minimum geometric changes as possible in the morphology from the NACA 4415 airfoil to seek the GOE 449 lift performance a new airfoil was obtained. The aerodynamics properties of this airfoil, called FUSION, are close to the GOE 449 airfoil, obtaining a 7% less lift. It is expected to substitute the use of any auxiliary mechanism like flaps, slats or airbrakes, using smart materials in order to increase the operational capacities of the aircraft and replace the weight of this by payload.