CFD With FloEFD
This precise Navier-Stokes based Software was perfect. I was able to test more than 50 shapes of each elements i worked on: The shape of the V-Tail, the Winglets en the wing root
In Total with all the unused/test data my computer must have done more than 300 Calculations of the pressure all around HIKO, calculating the drag and lift forces. Thats represents around 250 hours of calculation !
Multiparametric optimization
I discovered a great tool of FloEFD I'd never seen before: the Multiparametric Optimization tool.
I decided what dimensions I wanted to change, the range and the step. For exemple, I changed the shape of the winglet with 3 parameters: its height and the tension of two curbes. FloEFD tested every combination resulting in testing a high range of shapes
How wide should the wing root be?
The first calculation I made was the most simple with a single parameter: the width of the wing root
The optimum width seems to be 39mm
I tried from 30mm to 70mm. In the calculation volume i chose (which is not the complete plane) the drag force at 5 m/s varied from 430 mN to 370 mN
Another example: the V-tail
I tried to find a correct shae for the V-tail by changing the tension of tangents of the guiding curbes of the leading and trailing edges
I however didn't choose the optimum shape but the third best shape.
Indeed the optimum shape would have given a thin and fragile V-Tail with not enough area. But the one I chose only had 1% more drag with enough area to stabilize the plane and to be strong enough.
Between all the shapes that FloEFD tried, the "worst" shape had 9% more drag than the best one
glimps of the results
If you want to see how this FloEFD composant looks like, here is a glimps of the Multiparametric optimization window
