Investigation of Truss-Braced Wing Aircraft Transonic Wing-Strut Interference Effects Using FUN3D

This paper presents a computational study of transonic wing-strut interference effects of Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) aircraft using the high-fidelity CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) code FUN3D (Fully Unstructured Navier-Stokes Three Dimensional). The study is conducted for the wing-strut and the wing-alone configurations at different Mach numbers and Reynolds numbers. The interference effects are calculated by comparing the wing aerodynamics along the spanwise direction between the wing-strut and the wing-alone configurations. The presence of the strut underneath the wing induces a suction peak on the lower surface of the wing, which causes changes in aerodynamic forces and moments, as well as the aerodynamic center location. The interference effects become more pronounced as the Mach number increases. The Reynolds number has less impact on the interference effects. A transonic wing-strut interference aerodynamic correction method is developed for use in a lower-fidelity tool, VSPAERO [a vortex lattice flow solver], coupled to a finite-element model for rapid flutter analysis.