Morphing aircraft wing variable-sweep: two practical methods and their aerodynamic characteristics

In order to explore the methods of morphing aircraft variablesweep and their aerodynamic characteristics, numerical simulation of the flow fields of a rotating variablesweep wingbody and a shearing variablesweep wingbody was conducted, and the aerodynamic characteristics and its mechanism were analyzed. Numerical simulation method of viscous compressible flow and hybrid grid of prismhexahedron were used. The results demonstrate that: shearing variablesweep has better characteristics than rotating variablesweep in that the former has better lifttodrag ratio and drag when flying at a speed in the range from M∞ 0.3 to M∞ 0.8, and the main reason is distinct flow field structure caused by the different variablesweep methods.