MORPHING TRAILING-EDGE AERODYNAMICS AND THE ROLE OF TURBULENCE MODELING

This paper investigates whether continuous morphing trailing edges provide measurable aerodynamic advan tages over a conventional hinged aileron and, critically, whether such advantages can be identified reliably without flow-regime-consistent turbulence and transition modeling. A benchmark-driven computational frame work is first established using the NACA0012, LS0417 (GA(W)-1), and FX66-S-196 V1 airfoils over fully turbu lent and transitional Reynolds-number regimes. The validation stage shows that no single turbulence model is uniformly adequate across all cases: the preferred model depends on Reynolds number, boundary-layer state, and the presence of separation and transition. The reported results indicate that continuous morphing suppresses hinge-region loading discontinuities and improves peak aerodynamic efficiency by approximately 10-15% in representative cases, while wind-tunnel confinement produces non-negligible changes in both inte grated aerodynamic coefficients and local pressure distributions. The results support morphing trailing edges as a promising aerodynamic control-surface concept and show that their assessment should be treated as a coupled problem of geometry, flow regime, and numerical-model fidelity