Currently, the guys of RA project are developing a campaign of CFD simulations, with the aim of simulating internal flows for the aircraft and quantifying the effectiveness of an air intake battery cooling system. In particular, it must be verified that the air flow through the box is sufficient and above all does not present irregularities, which would make it much more difficult to cool the battery packs.
First of all we proceeded with the simulation of the internal flow to the wing box, to obtain a visualization of the possible field of motion. So, a qualitative rather than quantitative analysis was therefore carried out. By means of these simulations, the air flow rate involved in the internal flow has been estimated and will interact directly with the batteries, applying boundary conditions extrapolated from the simulations of the external field.
Secondly, we moved on to the simulation of the full model plane coupled to the internal flow. As a result, this CFD simulates the behaviour of the air flow when it hits the aeroplane equipped with air intakes. Hence It simulates both the exterior and the interior of the wing thus allowing to obtain data increasingly closer to reality, given the coupling of the two flows. Indeed, this simulation of the aircraft also serves to assess that the air intake does not alter its aerodynamic characteristics significantly.