Numerical Simulation of Water-Landing Performance of a Regional Aircraft

Abstract

The water-landing performance of a regional airplane with high wing and high tail is studied using the numerical simulation method. In the simulation, the Reynold-averaged Navier–Stokes equations with the realizable turbulence model are solved by the finite volume method. The volume-of-fluid method is used to capture the water–air interface, and the six-degree-of-freedom model and the global moving mesh method are used to deal with the relative motion between the water and the airplane. In the result section, a typical water-landing process is studied in detail, and the effects of initial pitch angle and initial descent velocity on the water-landing performance are presented and analyzed. A large initial pitch angle is suggested to improve the safety during water landing.