AFRODITE

Advanced Fluid Research On Drag reduction In Turbulence Experiments — AFRODITE

A hot topic in today's debate on global warming is drag reduction in aeronautics. The most benecial concept for drag reduction is to maintain the major portion of the airfoil laminar. Estimations show that the potential drag reduction can be as much as 15%, which would give a signicant reduction of NOx and CO emissions in the atmosphere considering that the number of aircraft take offs, only in the EU, is over 19 million per year. An important element for successful flow control, which can lead to a reduced aerodynamic drag, is enhanced physical understanding of the transition to turbulence process.

Funding

AFRODITE is a research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) via a Starting Grant. The period of the grant is 2010-2015.

Objective

The objective within the AFRODITE project is to develop passive laminar flow control systems for transition to turbulence delay. A passive control method is in this context defined as a method which does not require any energy input to the control system in order to achieve the control. Instead one uses the existing energy in the flow in a smart way.