Towards a Combined CAD and CFD Development Process of a Wingsuit

Abstract

A wingsuit gives the human body an airfoil-like shape to fly in the sky. The paper proposes a holistic design approach combining the fluid mechanical simulation of the function with appropriate CAE-software for the generation of pattern cuttings. A parametric CAD model of the flyer wearing a wingsuit is created enabling easy changes in its posture and the wingsuit geometry. The flow simulation is set up using a commercial CFD code. Since there is no database available for the flow around a wingsuit, validation is conducted for a delta wing. This configuration is close to a wingsuit in terms of geometry and flow regime, but simpler and with sound experimental data available. Boundary conditions, mesh and selected turbulence model are validated with this configuration and experience gained about parameters of the solution process. Due to the computational link between CAE and CFD it's possible to accelerate the development of wingsuits.

Parametric geometry model design of a wingsuit

“…Winkler and Pernpeintner, 2008; Pernpeintner and Winkler, 2010; Ubbens et al , 2016)). Using virtual models at every level makes processes transparent and efficient by reducing prototypes and implementing the required model diversity (Ansari et al , 2016).…”