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Due to their flight in the air, the wings of an aircraft experience induced drag due to their movement through the wind. However, this induced drag poses some issues for its operation and maintenance along with some environmental problems. This drag force increases the fuel consumption by the aircraft and emits toxic gases such as carbon monoxide, for instance. This paper explores a method to increase the optimisation of an aircraft by attaching a winglet to the wing, to observe its impact on the reduction of induced drag experienced by a small aircraft. After some research, 3 types of winglets namely blended, canted and comb which are actively in use in the aviation market were chosen and designed. To save testing time, they were tested by employing CFD testing methods. Each winglet, which was designed at various angles of attack, was simulated using the wind tunnel to obtain its CL/CD value. The CL/CD value was compared for all the winglets at varied angles of attack to obtain the winglet with the highest value which was the Canted winglet at 10°. The CL/CD value of this was then compared to the CL/CD value for a wing without any winglet attached. The results exhibited that the wing with a winglet had a greater CL/CD value compared to that without any winglet. This illustrates that the winglet indeed improves the efficiency of an aircraft by reducing the induced drag by controlling the wingtip vortices.

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Optimization of Winglet Design for Reduced Induced Drag in Small Aviation Aircraft Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

  • 会议论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Pragya Sri Gunturu,
  • Reetu Jain

摘要

Due to their flight in the air, the wings of an aircraft experience induced drag due to their movement through the wind. However, this induced drag poses some issues for its operation and maintenance along with some environmental problems. This drag force increases the fuel consumption by the aircraft and emits toxic gases such as carbon monoxide, for instance. This paper explores a method to increase the optimisation of an aircraft by attaching a winglet to the wing, to observe its impact on the reduction of induced drag experienced by a small aircraft. After some research, 3 types of winglets namely blended, canted and comb which are actively in use in the aviation market were chosen and designed. To save testing time, they were tested by employing CFD testing methods. Each winglet, which was designed at various angles of attack, was simulated using the wind tunnel to obtain its CL/CD value. The CL/CD value was compared for all the winglets at varied angles of attack to obtain the winglet with the highest value which was the Canted winglet at 10°. The CL/CD value of this was then compared to the CL/CD value for a wing without any winglet attached. The results exhibited that the wing with a winglet had a greater CL/CD value compared to that without any winglet. This illustrates that the winglet indeed improves the efficiency of an aircraft by reducing the induced drag by controlling the wingtip vortices.