Numerical simulation of the aerodynamic influence of an aircraft on the hose-refueling system during aerial refueling operations ☆

Abstract The aerodynamic characteristics of the flow field of an embarked buddy-refueling aircraft are analyzed to technically aid the docking between the embarked buddy-refueling aircraft and the receiver. A three-surface geometric model of the embarked buddy-refueling aircraft is designed with CATIA software, and then the model is imported into Fluent Module of Workbench Software to generate an unstructured tetrahedral mesh. Based on CFD technique, the turbulence model adopts the standard k–e equations and the control theory adopts three-dimensional N–S equations. The aerodynamic characteristics of the flow field of the embarked buddy-refueling aircraft are numerically simulated with energy conservation equations and the basic characteristics of the flow field such as the pressure, velocity, trapped vortex and the temperature of jet blast are derived through the simulation. The results indicate the efficiency of the simulation method to analyze the aerodynamic characteristics of the flow field of the embarked buddy-refueling aircraft and the consistency with the experimental results.

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