An experimental wind-tunnel investigation was undertaken to determine the effects of Gurney flaps on a 40-deg cropped nonslender
delta wing at a chord Reynolds number of 250,000. In the experiment, the height of the Gurney flaps was varied from 0.01
C to 0.05
C, and the sideslip angle of the model was selected as 0, 5, 10 and 20 deg. In addition, the 0.05
C Gurney flap was serrated with different heights of 0.01
C to 0.05
C separately. In comparison with the baseline clean configuration results, it was found that the model with plate Gurney flaps
can indeed increase the lift-to-drag ratio at moderate-to-high lift coefficients for the wing, and the greatest increment
was obtained for the 0.01
C Gurney flap. The effect of Gurney flap on the increment of lift-to-drag ratio tends to be not significant with the increase
of sideslip angle. Moreover, the 0.05
C serrated Gurney flap provides the best performance among the serrated Gurney flaps.
Received: 6 July 2000 / Accepted: 21 June 2001 Published online: 29 November 2001