An Overview of Numerical Methods for Analyzing Wingtip Devices to Enhance Aircraft Performance

One of the biggest challenges for the aviation industry in today's scenario is keeping jet fuel consumption as low as possible to maintain business profitability and meet low carbon emission requirements. This makes a revolution in aircraft design imperative. With the development of advanced computational techniques, researchers in this field are increasingly interested in exploring reliable numerical approaches to study the design changes necessary to achieve stated goals. Wingtip devices, commonly referred to as winglets, have shown to reduce approximately 40% of the total drag experienced by an aircraft by reducing wingtip vortices. This article mainly focuses on numerical investigation techniques used and explored by different researchers to validate the method by comparing experimental results of previous investigations in wind tunnel testing. Achieving error-free and reliable results with minimal computation time remains a challenge. There are many open-source and prepackaged software packages available that can be used to perform the simulations necessary for optimized and rapid results. Numerically proven methods help reduce experimental testing, reducing setup costs and time.