Aerodynamic Characteristics of Forward Swept Wing in Subsonic Speed

Abstract

A forward swept wing was designed to use for a supersonic aircraft. Its aerodynamic characteristics were studied through experiments and numerical simulations which excluded the subsonic speed condition. For this paper aims to explore the aerodynamic characteristics of the forward swept wing in the range of subsonic speed by using a computational fluid dynamics method. In simulation, the airfoil shape of the wing model was NACA 3412. It was varied in both swept angle and angle of attack. The airspeed was given constant at 50 m/s. The simulation results indicate that the forward swept wing model is suitable for the aerobatic aircraft because lift coefficient and the stall angle of the forward swept wing model is higher than the non-swept wing model. Moreover, the aerodynamic stall of the forward swept wing occurs at the wing root which makes the aircraft able to maintain the controllability of the aileron surface at high angle of attack. However, the aircraft with forward swept wing model tends to consume more energy as compared with non-swept wing model. Because the maximum lift to drag ratio of the forward swept wing is less than the non-swept wing. Non-swept wing model has the maximum lift to drag ratio of 8.76 at the angle of attack 2°. While the forward swept wing 35° provides the maximum lift to drag ratio of 7.47 at the angle of attack 6°.