Investigation of High-Lift Flowfield of an Energy Efficient Transport Wing

The high-lift flowfield around a multielement energy efficient transport wing is investigated both experimentally and numerically. Special emphasis is placed on resolving aeroacoustically relevant local features of the mean flowfield, e.g., separated flow regions including recirculation bubbles, free shear layers/wakes/jets, and vortices. Such features are typically present in slat and flap cove areas, flap side-edge regions, and slat-main-wing confluent boundary layer. The flow fluctuations sustained in these regions can generate significant noise, especially via interaction with nearby airframe structures. The experimental measurements and computed results presented here show excellent agreement for mean aerodynamic quantities and provide valuable physical insight into potential sources of flow unsteadiness, such as the vortex system near the flap side edge. Whereas the generic features of the computed flowfield are similar to other published studies, the specific details of the acoustically relevant flow features are found to depend on the geometry of the high-lift configuration