Influence of the curved ground surface on the lift of flat plate airfoil

At present, only the flat ground surface problem is investigated in most studies on ground effect, which is not effective for practical applications due to the universal existence of curved ground surface. In this paper, the lift calculation of a two-dimensional flat plate airfoil placed near a curved ground surface is investigated. In order to calculate the complex velocity in the flow field, the complex variable function theory is employed. The conformal mapping method is applied to transform the flat plate airfoil to a cylinder in the uniform flow. Moreover, the discrete vortices method is modified to convert the curved ground surface to a series of discrete boundary elements. Two kinds of curved ground surfaces are considered: semicylindrical hollows and semicylindrical hills. It is shown that the lift fluctuation of flat plate airfoil located near a hollow or a hill is considerably serious, which should be considered during the design of flight vehicles flying near the ground surface.