EFFECT OF MICRO-RAMP VORTEX GENERATOR IN IMPROVING AERODYNAMICS PERFORMANCE OF WING-IN-GROUND CRAFT FUSELAGE

Abstract

A wing-in-ground (WIG) vehicle is designed to fly above the water surface at an altitude lower than its wing chord. This is due to the positive ground effect as it creates lift and reduce the effect of aerodynamic drag thus enhancing the overall efficiency of the wing. However, the current WIG craft has shown significant hydrodynamic and aerodynamic drag against the hull-fuselage during take-off and cruising. These phenomena will lead to the flow separation and inclination effects on drag, which explains the abundant of research on flow control devices installed on the WIG hull-fuselage. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of flow control devices, known as micro-ramp vortex generator (MVG) towards the aerodynamic performance of WIG hull-fuselage through wind tunnel experiments. The models were tested in the flow velocity within the range of 1m/s to 10m/s with Reynolds number of 8.6 x 10⁴. From this investigation, the finding shows that there is a reduction of drag of 21% with the present of MVG in comparison to the baseline case. This indicates that the Micro-Ramp MVG has a high potential to be used as flow control device in improving the aerodynamics efficiency on a WIG craft.