Abstract

An ever-increasing awareness of the environmental impact of our actions today has led to a shift in priorities for designers in many disciplines. Particular attention has been drawn to air travel and the long-term implications of pumping CO2 and other combustion products directly into our high-level atmosphere. This growing environmental pressure, coupled with the economic drive to reduce operating costs, places increasing demands on the commercial aircraft designer to develop ever-more efficient airliners. At the centre of this drive for efficiency is aircraft drag reduction. One promising method of cutting down drag is through the use of small bumps on the wing surface to break up local supersonic shockwaves into lower-entropy systems, thereby reducing their associated drag.

Whilst 2D bump performance on and off-design has been linked to key design variables, this is not the case for 3D bumps. To be able to effectively design with 3D bumps, a better understanding of the relationship between key design variables and overall performance, as well as of the trade-off between 2D and 3D performance is required.