Improvement of the Aerotrain Aerodynamic Performance by Controling Wing Interactions

Aerotrain is a high speed ground transportation system using natural energy resources. It has vertical side wings at each tip of main wings arranged in tandem to regulate automatically its lateral position in a guide way by the Wing-in-Ground effect between the side wings and side walls. According to the data obtained from the wind tunnel experiment, the interaction of main wing and side wing was higher in the ground effect than in free stream condition. The present work tried to raise the aerodynamic efficiency by using attached fillet in the sharp corner between the side wing and main wing, we can considerably improve the aerodynamic characteristics, that is, over all lift to drag ratio of the model. The results show that the optimum conditions of lift to drag ratio depends on the elimination of separation area by means of the shape and size of the fillet.