The design of tomorrow’s aircraft will be dictated by the need to have more environmentally ‘green’ aircraft in line with the ACARE 2020 vision. This can be achieved in three ways: reduced structural weight, improved combustion, and optimised aerodynamic performance.
PLASMAERO acronym stands for useful PLASMas for AEROdynamic control.
PLASMAERO seeks to demonstrate how surface & spark discharge plasma actuators could be used to control aircraft aerodynamic flow. This will be achieved through an enhanced understanding of their physical characteristics and an in-depth study of how they may be optimised to influence the air flow properties. It will show the advantages and notably the ease of implementation that these innovative devices have over other potential active actuators.
The project objectives are:
- Understand, model and classify, through experimental and numerical studies, the most relevant physical characteristics of surface and jet plasma actuators capable of influencing airflow;
- Perform comparative experimental tests & numerical studies of different actuator configurations to select the most promising for further development;
- Demonstrate through wind tunnel experimentations the ability of plasma devices to significantly influence the aerodynamics in terms of lift, lift/drag and high lift noise in representative aeronautical airflow conditions (take-off, cruise and landing).
- Demonstrate the easy-of-use and installation of these actuators in a reduced size flight platform.
- Provide exhaustive recommendations on future work to be performed to achieve the implementation of this technology base on next generation aircraft programmes.
The work will be concentrated on the factors influencing lift and notably through the reduction of separation, of tip vortex and through delayed transition for take-off and landing and influencing lift/drag through controlling the shock/boundary layer interaction induced turbulent separation for cruise conditions. The results of this work will demonstrate to the aircraft industry the advantages of this technology both in terms of ease of use and integration possibilities on the airplane.
PLASMAERO key figures:
Starting date : 1st October 2009
Duration : 36 months
Total budget : 5M€
Total EC funding : 3.8M€
Number of partners involved : 11 partners
Number of countries involved : 7 countries
