ESR9 | Biagio Ambrosino

Stability and sensitivity methods for improved design and assessment of hybrid laminar flow control concepts

ESR9 | Biagio Ambrosino

University of Naples Federico II

Host Institution: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)

Phd awarding institution: UPM

Master Title: Aerospace Engineering

Research Interest: Biagio Ambrosino has obtained both his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from University of Naples Federico II where he developed strong interest in aerodynamics and fluid dynamics. During his studies he has had the opportunity to work on several projects concerning computational fluid dynamics enhancing his skills in different programming languages. In his M.Sc. thesis he worked on developing a new class of aircraft design, the distributed electric propulsion, by means of numerical simulations on different degree of fidelity. The aim of the work was to validate the use of a lower fidelity vortex lattice approach to these kind of configurations. After the Master he secured a 6 months research position at AVIO S.p.a. where he focused on developing a numerical methodology for the study of the combustion in liquid propellant rocket. In particular the use of different turbulent combustion models for the methane/oxygen mixture has been studied. After that, he took a full time position at AVIO S.p.a. where he worked on the design and thermal analysis of the solid propellant rocket. Besides his educational/working experience, Biagio is a Formula 1 enthusiastic and during free time he really enjoys traveling.

Link to Personal Website

Laminar turbulent transition is an important issue of modern aircraft aerodynamic design. In cruise condition, the drag caused by a fully turbulent boundary layer constitutes a large part of the total drag. Furthermore, the transition strongly influences the thermal load of vehicles flying at supersonic and hypersonic speed. LFC technology is being considered for applications on transonic and supersonic aircraft in order to reduce operating cost by reducing the drag.

To this aim, an adequate understanding of the laminar-turbulent boundary layer transition is of fundamental importance. The main focus of the research project will be on the transition process in 3-D boundary layer of transonic swept wings with surface irregularities. The mechanisms leading to transition is strongly influenced by three dimensional irregularities, but this effect is yet not fully understood. The onset of the roughness induced transition today is mainly predicted by engineering correlations based on empirical criteria. But, obviously, these methods does not give any insight on the physical transition mechanism. For this reason, numerical tools, such as Linear stability analysis and parabolized Navier Stokes equations, will be employed to analyse the wake flow instabilities behind surface roughness.

The major accomplishments expected are: 1) Quantify effects of discrete and distributed roughness on boundary-layer instabilities and transition. 2) To further improve the modelling capabilities of numerical tools for transition analysis and transition prediction. 3) To improve existing or derive new correlations that can be used to estimate the effects on the transition location.