Family of Retrofittable Drag Reduction Systems for Tactical Aircraft Range Extension

The proposed effort seeks to build upon prior and ongoing work at Continuum Dynamics, Inc. (CDI) for NASA and the Department of Defense to develop a family of retrofittable wingtip turbine (WTT) derived systems for increasing the unrefueled range and combat capabilities of naval tactical aircraft.  While emphasis is placed on current aircraft in the fleet to minimize the time to field the systems, the technology is compatible with emerging and future aircraft.  Most traditional approaches for improving aircraft range focus on reducing drag, by “cleaning up” the flow around the aircraft, redesigning the wing or fuselage, and/or enhancing the propulsion system for increased fuel efficiency – all of which require major airframe modifications and the associated timeline and costs to deploy.  Rather than performing modifications to the underlying aircraft, the proposed effort will take a novel approach to generating thrust and/or power by harvesting waste energy from the wake of the aircraft in order to increase aircraft range.  This means that the WTT technology is compatible with, and would build on, more traditional aircraft enhancements (i.e. active/passive flow control, surface coatings like riblets, or propulsion system upgrades).  The proposed family of systems consists of a series of increasingly sophisticated designs, ranging from field-retrofittable thrust generating passive devices compatible with the existing aircraft to fully-integrated thrust and power generation systems.  This means that testing and integration can be undertaken in a tiered manner to facilitate and accelerate transition to the fleet as additional capabilities are demonstrated and desired.  For example, in order to get these technologies deployed as quickly as possible, lower-risk passive designs can be undergoing testing and initial deployment while higher-risk more advanced systems are still in development. Prior and ongoing work has established WTT feasibility, and in Phase I, CDI and the United States Naval Academy seek to undertake the conceptual design and quantification of the trades between WTTs and several conventional wing modifications (e.g. tip extensions and winglets) that could be used for improving the range of tactical aircraft. Phase II would see more detailed system design and hardware development and testing to meet the Navy’s needs.