This paper presents the results from a study to design an optimal adaptive
shock control bump for a transonic aerofoil. An optimisation framework
comprising aerodynamic and structural computational tools has been used to
assess the performance of candidate adaptive bump geometries based on a novel
surface-pressure-based performance metric. The geometry of the optimal resultant
design is a unique feature of its adaptivity; being strongly in
uenced
by the (passive) aerodynamic pressure forces on the
exible surface as well as
the (active) displacement constraints. This optimal geometry bifurcates the
shock-wave and carefully manages the recovering post-shock
ow to maximise
pressure-smearing in the shock-region with only a small penalty in L=D for the
aerofoil. Short adaptive bumps (with small imposed displacements) generally
perform better than taller ones, and maintain their performance advantage for
a wide range of bump positions, suggesting good robustness to variations in
shock position, which are an inevitable feature of a real-world
ight application.
Such devices may o er advantages over conventional ( xed geometry) shock
control bumps, where optimal performance is achieved with taller devices, at
the expense of poor robustness to variations in shock position.
Keywords: Shock Control Bumps; Aeroelastic Optimisation