An investigation into the use of GAMA water tunnel for visualization of vortex

breakdown on the delta wing

Setyawan Bekti Wibowo, Sutrisno, Tri Agung Rohmat, Zainuri Anwar, Firdaus R. Syadi, Reza Mahardika, and
Wega F. Naufal

Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 2001, 050007 (2018); doi: 10.1063/1.5049998

View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5049998
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apc/2001/1
Published by the American Institute of Physics
 An Investigation into the Use of GAMA Water Tunnel for
Visualization of Vortex Breakdown on the Delta Wing
Setyawan Bekti Wibowo1,2,a), Sutrisno1,b), Tri Agung Rohmat1,c), Zainuri Anwar1,d), Firdaus R.
Syadi1,e), Reza Mahardika2,f) and Wega F. Naufal1,g)

1
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada,
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vocational School, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta 55281,
Indonesia
a)
Corresponding author: setyawanbw@ugm.ac.id
b)
sutrisno@ugm.ac.id
c)
triagung_rohmat@ugm.ac.id
d)
zzainurianwar@gmail.com
e)
virdes.batik@gmail.com
f)
inski_mahardika@yahoo.com
g)
wegafn@gmail.com

Abstract. The use of delta wings is widely used for high-speed aircraft such as fighter aircraft. In the delta wing, there is a
pressure difference that causes the vortex flow and forms a vortex core with a very low pressure that will lead to the addition of
lift force. Increased angle of attack will raise the vortex core speed so that the force will also rise, but under certain conditions,
the vortex core structure will be destroyed, or there is a vortex breakdown that will remove the lift force. The analysis of the
occurrence of vortex breakdown becomes very important to maintain lift force on the wing. Vortex breakdown analysis can be
done through visualization techniques. The use of water tunnel as a visualization test facility has been widely used and has
advantages in detail visualization. This research will be testing the character of vortex breakdown on delta wing by using GAMA
water tunnel facility. For comparison and validation would be used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. The results
of the research show that the GAMA water tunnel facility can show the vortex breakdown phenomenon and the aerodynamic
forces that occur on the delta wing. These results have conformity with the test using CFD and other references where the vortex
breakdown was affected by the angle of attack and the change of the sweep angle.

Keywords: water tunnel, vortex breakdown, delta wing, rollup vortex, visualization, CFD

INTRODUCTION

The delta wing is widely used in high-speed aircraft such as fighter aircraft because it can improve
maneuverability and agility. At high angles of attack, the delta wings produce greater lift and better stability than
rectangular wings (1). Surfaces on the wings greatly affect the formation of vortices that will make the lifting force
(2). In the delta wing, the flow will be divided through the leading edge down and up. Due to the pressure difference
at the top and bottom of the wing, it will form a vortex from the bottom upward flow, which will increase lift force
(3). The total lift force that occurs is the sum of the potential lift and a vortex lift increment. In the area above the
wing will form the lowest pressure that causes the occurrence of vortex cores as the location of the highest lift. At
certain speed and angle of attack, vortex cores will undergo structural changes to be destroyed by sudden pressure
changes. In that area, the lifting force value will be lost. Previous research has been done to examine the
characteristics of vortex roll-up venom and the occurrence of vortex breakdown which shows the aerodynamic
character of the delta wing type such as the instability of the pressure as well as from the speed change detection (4).
Detecting the occurrence of vortex breakdown becomes a very important thing that indicates the loss of lifting
force on the wing. The flow visualization method is an effective way of determining the vortex breakdown
phenomenon. The limitation of the equipment in exposing the flow phenomenon through the visualization method

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Thermofluids 2017 (THERMOFLUID 2017)

AIP Conf. Proc. 2001, 050007-1–050007-6; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5049998
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1717-5/$30.00

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causes difficulties in revealing the flow phenomenon. The use of a water tunnel (WaTu) and CFD will make it easier
to visualize the flow and uncover the phenomena that occur. It has been a long time since many water tunnel studies
have been used to view the visualization of flow tests on moving or fluid flows. The use of water tunnel is perfect
for studying flow visualization because it has a higher density and lower mass diffusion than the air. Another
advantage in the case of dynamic measurement of maneuver is the required rate of rotation is lower than using a
wind tunnel, so the effect of inertia the load can be ignored (5).
The use of water tunnel has many advantages, especially in producing a more detailed visualization. However,
the equalization due to different conditions, such as the different Reynolds number values between real conditions,
in the wind tunnel and using the water tunnel make its problems. According to (6) on the model to be tested in the
water tunnel, it is necessary to have the equation of the conditions for the test conditions to represent the actual
conditions. Similarity conditions include geometry, kinematics, and dynamics. For geometric similarity, the model
must have the same shape as the full-size model, so the model dimension is appropriate and has a constant-to-full
ratio. For kinematic similarity, the speed at the location of the model flow field must have a constant ratio. As for
dynamic similarity, the force in the model area must have a constant ratio.
The difficulty in getting quantitative data would be better if combined with the use of computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) techniques. (7) builds a water tunnel test facility, performs calibrations and tests for its use in
analyzing the shear stresses on the walls or objects passed by the fluid. To measure the drag force on the surface that
occurs with the use of force scales, as well as hot film, pitot and multi ole pressure to see the flow distribution
starting from the wall. The validation to see the water tunnel character used by CFD method by comparing it with
the flow character condition in the test section. From the test, there will be a character from a water tunnel that has a
uniform flow and is suitable for use in aerodynamic flow visualization testing.
In this research, the aerodynamic characteristics of the delta wing are observed by observing the vortex
breakdown and the aerodynamic force that happened by using GAMA Water Tunnel Facility then done by
comparison with CFD. It is expected that the test will be able to provide a review of the characteristics of the use of
the GAMA Water Tunnel for testing the aerodynamic characteristics of an aircraft and the like.

EXPERIMENTAL APPARATUS & PROCEDURES

FIGURE 1 Experimental apparatus (a) scheme of GAMA water tunnel test facility (b) The geometry of the delta wing 650 and
(c) The geometry of the delta wing 750

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 Experiment using a square-shaped water tunnel with 200 mm height, 200 mm width and 1500 mm length with a
maximum speed of 0.84 m/s as shown in Fig 1a. Experiment using a square-shaped water tunnel with 200 mm
height, 200 mm width and 1500 mm length with a maximum speed of 0.84 m/s. Water tunnel has a storage pool
above 1200cc. Water was drained from the pool through the pipe to the tank. The Water will flow passes through
two honeycombs before it reaches the test section to keep the flow laminar awake. The lift coefficient (Cl) and drag
coefficient (Cd) are obtained from the three DOF force sensor device (8) that already installed.
The model consists of 2 pieces of the delta wing with sweep angle 65˚ and 70˚ refers to (6) and (9) as shown in
Fig.1b-c. At that sweep angle conditions, the phenomenon of roll-up vortex and vortex breakdown is more visible
and easily observable. There is an ink line in the 0.8 mm diameter model with the ink output hole at the end of the
delta wing sweep. On the wing side of the delta, there is a flap with a slope of 45˚ angle and 5 mm thick. The model
is clamped on a vertical strain gauge to measure the coefficient of lift (Cl) and coefficient of drag (Cd). Experiments
were performed by testing the delta wing model on a water tunnel with a velocity of 0.23 m/s and Reynolds number
50396.37 on the angle of attack (AoA) 100 to 700 with step 50. During the ink, the test was streamed out through the
channel ink on the model to see the flow phenomena formed on the delta wing.

Numerical Procedure
The use of numerical methods is performed to validate the flow phenomena in the water tunnel. The numerical
testing process begins with the preparation of a partially symmetric CAD model for full-scale measurements of
airflow with a geometric ratio of 1: 120 to the model scale of the water tunnel. Then, the finished model created in
the computational domain with boundary conditions such as inlet, outlet, wing wall, and symmetry wall. Making a
mesh on the model by identifying aircraft parts into blocks based on wing surface changes. The mesh is structured
hexahedral mesh by changing the mesh size starting from the wall portion as the smallest size and changing
logarithmically enlarge to the outside. The smallest size of the mesh on the wall is determined by the value of y+<=1
mm and the number of cells 4.9 million cells as seen in Fig. 2.

FIGURE 2 Structure mesh and domain on the delta wing

In this study, there were several variations on the angle of attack (AoA) from 10 0 to 700 with step 50. The size of
the model and the test conditions follow the form of common sizes on the real aircraft. The test velocity refers to the
similarity between non-dimensional numbers in the water tunnel with the full-scale flight presented by (6). The flow
rate was set at the inlet velocity of 0.2 M (68.6 m/s), flows on the wing surface with 0.08% intensity turbulence.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

From the test results obtained the coefficient of lift (Cl) and coefficient of drag (Cd) as shown in Fig. 3-4. In Fig.
3-a shows the value of the lift force coefficient (Cl) to the angle of attack (AoA) for the delta wing with the 70 0
sweep angle, Cl values are also compared with some of the previous studies presented by (6). In the picture shows
an increase in lift force starting from a small attack angle to a maximum value at an angle of 40 0 and subsequently
decreased. The maximum value of Cl in the test using a water tunnel is 1.8. The test results were compared with
CFD testing and also several other studies summarized in (6) and showed similar results with the water tunnel
experiments. The difference in lift coefficient (Cl) values between the water tunnel method and the CFD at the

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angles 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 is about 0.5%, 1%, 3.5%, 3.9%, and 5.0%, and this value is still acceptable. Figure
3-b shows the drag force on the experiments compared to the CFD results. At the small angle of attack indicates a
resemblance of results up to a maximum angle of 400, at a larger angle there is a slight trend of value difference, this
is due to the need for improvement in the computational model.
Figure 4 is a test result on a wing delta 650 with GAMA water tunnel (WaTu) and compared to CFD. Figure 4-a
shows that the results for the lift coefficient values have similarities between the water tunnel test, CFD and several
other studies summarized by (10). Increase Cl occurs starting from an angle of 00 to 400 with the value of the
maximum lift coefficient up to 1.1 than decreased which indicates the decline of lifting force. The difference in Cl
between the water tunnel method and the CFD is about 1.1% to 3.9%, and this value is still acceptable. While in
Fig.4-b shows the value of drag coefficient between the experimental results of water tunnel and CFD that has value
conformity.
The increase in lifting force on the delta wing is because of the formation of the roll-up vortex due to the
pressure difference on the top of the wing. The center of the roll-up vortex formed the vortex core which has the
lowest pressure as shown in Fig. 5. In the figure, it presents the vortex cores from testing of water tunnel and CFD
for the delta wing with sweep angle 650 and 700 for variation angle of attack 200,300,350,400,450. The formation of a
vortex core is indicated by a stream of ink over the wings that form a long line.
Figure 5 shows that on the Delta wing 650 with an angle of attack 200 the vortex core occurs along the wing
body, the vortex core being damaged which is marked by the emergence of the outbreak of the ink flow or
disturbances over the trailing wing. While on the delta wing of 700, vortex breakdown still occurs behind the wing.
The occurrence of a vortex breakdown can also be seen from the visualization of CFD in which the occurrence of
vortex core and vortex breakdown is similar to a water tunnel experiment.

FIGURE 3 Lift coefficient and drag coefficient on 700 delta wing vs. AoA

FIGURE 4 Lift coefficient and drag coefficient on 650 delta wing vs. AoA

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 Increased angle of attack will cause the increase in velocity on the vortex core, causing an increase in lifting
force. However, the increase causes the vortex core flow to become more unstable so that the vortex breakdown that
occurs will come forward. The location of the vortex breakdown for the delta wings 65 0 and 700 is presented in Fig.
6. The location of the vortex breakdown from experiments on GAMA water tunnel was compared with some
previous studies that have been summarized in the references (6,9), and the results indicate a good similarity. From
the picture shown that at a small attack angle (less than 200) then almost the entire surface flows laminar and there is
no vortex breakdown over the wing. The location of the vortex breakdown will creep forward along with the
increase of the angle of attack. At the corner of 600 vortex breakdowns have occurred since the beginning that
causes the value of lifting force will decrease. At the angle of the delta with high swap angle, the occurrence of the
vortex roll-up becomes easier and faster, while the occurrence of vortex breakdown is slower, thus causing greater
lifting force for wing delta with 700 sweep angle.

(a) WaTu d65-A200 (b) CFD d65-A200 (c) WaTu d70-A (d) CFD d70-A200

(e) d65-A300 (f) CFD d65-A300 (g) WaTu d70-A300 (h) CFD d70-A300

(i) d65-A350 (j) CFD d65-A350 (k) WaTu d70-A350 (l) CFD d70-A350

(m) d65-A400 (n) CFD d65-A400 (o) WaTu d70-A400 (p) CFD d70-A400

(q) d65-A450 (r) CFD d65-A450 (s) WaTu d70-A450 (t) CFD d70-A450

FIGURE 5 Comparison of vortex cores visualization using GAMA water tunnel (WaTu) and CFD on delta wing with 700 and
650 sweep angle and vortex breakdown occurrence at angle of attack 200,300,350,400,450

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 (a) Vortex breakdown location on the Delta 650 (b) Vortex breakdown location on the Delta 700

FIGURE 6 Vortex breakdown location

The occurrence of vortex breakdown will remove the lift force, so that until the angle of attack reaches 400,
vortex breakdown location has reached 1/3 part of wing length, in this condition Cl can still reach the maximum.
After passing through the angle of 400, on a delta wing has been dominated by the occurrence of vortex breakdown,
so that the lifting force Cl has begun to decline. From the above figures shows that tests conducted on Delta 650 and
700 using GAMA water tunnel facilities lead to similarities to results obtained from CFD, both quantitatively and
qualitatively. The same results were also shown qualitatively by comparison against some other test references.

CONCLUSION

The results show that the using a GAMA water tunnel on the delta wing is capable of generating visualization
and aerodynamic forces as reference the aerodynamic characteristics of the delta wing. The results of the GAMA
water tunnel test are compatible with the test using CFD and the results of the other references. The difference in lift
coefficient (Cl) values obtained from the GAMA water tunnel compared to the CFD has a value of 1-5% which is
still acceptable. Similarly, the visualization results show similarities in revealing the vortex phenomenon and the
breakdown that occurs so that can be revealed the character of aerodynamics on the delta wing.

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