Flow analysis on the ventral gap of a paper airplane

Abstract

It is a challenging work to design micro aerial vehicle with great aerodynamic performance because the tiny wingspan at low-Reynolds-number cannot provide lift efficiently. The aerodynamic configuration of a classic delta-wing paper airplane is investigated in the present work with numerical method to discover its potential for micro aerial vehicle designs. Furthermore, the effect of the ventral gap on the aerodynamic characteristics of the paper airplane is investigated herein. The stall angles of attack reach 37.5° and 40°, respectively, for ventral opened configuration and the closed one, and the maximum lift coefficient reaches 1.49 and 1.46. The ventral-opened configuration has negative pitching moment coefficient (−0.01431) even at 37.5° while the closed one has a positive coefficient (0.01402). The reason may be the gap leads to a strong back-flow vortex before the trailing edge in the ventral gap which produces a strong nose-down moment. Generally, the ventral gap improves lift and dramatically influences the longitudinal stability compared with the one without it.