Prediction of Aerodynamic Characteristics of an Elliptic Airfoil at Low Reynolds Number

Author(s):  
Varun Chitta ◽  
D. Keith Walters

This study focuses on modeling the effects of transitional flow and surface curvature on aerodynamic characteristics of an elliptic airfoil. Numerical simulations have been performed on a 16% thick elliptic airfoil for a range of angle of attack (α) from 0° to 20° and flow Reynolds number (Re) of 3 × 105, using relatively new transition-sensitive and traditional fully turbulent eddy viscosity turbulence models. Test conditions were matched to experiments by Kwon and Park (2005) and numerical results were compared with available experimental data. Results indicate that the transition-sensitive models, namely k-kL-ω and Transition SST, accurately predict the laminar-to-turbulent transition locations and reproduce the laminar separation bubbles on the suction surface of the airfoil in agreement with the experimental data. Also, transition-sensitive models yield improved predictions of lift and drag performance when compared with results from fully turbulent models. The fully turbulent models; including SA and k-ω SST, and a newly developed curvature-sensitive model (SST k-ω-ν2) fail to capture the flow separation and reattachment locations near the leading edge of airfoil. However, the curvature-sensitive SST k-ω-ν2 model predicts the stall point of the airfoil close to experimental results, while all other tested RANS models failed to accurately predict the stall point. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that accurate aerodynamic predictions at both low and high angles of attack might be achieved by using a model that includes the effects of both transition and curvature.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anand Verma ◽  
Bastav Borah ◽  
Vinayak Kulkarni

Abstract The fluid flow analysis over a cambered airfoil having three different cavity locations on the suction surface is reported in this paper. The Elliptical cavity is created at LE, MC, and TE along chordwise locations from the leading to trailing edge. In this regard, the steady simulation is carried out in the Fluent at Reynolds number of 105 based on their chord length. The lift and drag characteristics for clean and cavities airfoil are investigated at different angles of attack. For the clean airfoil, the stall point is observed at 18°. The presence of a cavity improves the stall and aerodynamic characteristics of airfoil. It has been seen that the lift and drag coefficients for pre-stalled or lower angles are nearly similar to clean and cavity at MC or TE positions. For the post-stall point, the improvement in the aerodynamic performance is seen for the cavity at MC or TE. The cavity placed at LE produces lower lift and higher drag characteristics against other configuration models. The overall cavity effect for the flow around the airfoil is that it creates vortices, thereby re-energizes the slower moving boundary layer and delays the flow separation in the downstream direction. The outcomes of this analysis are suggested that the cavity at a position before the mid chord from the leading edge does not improve the performance of the airfoil. Though vortex is formed in the confined spaces but it is unable to reattach the flow towards the downstream direction of an airfoil.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Li ◽  
Peiting Sun ◽  
Hongming Wang

The leading-edge bulges along the extension direction are designed on the marine wingsail. The height and the spanwise wavelength of the protuberances are 0.1c and 0.25c, respectively. At Reynolds number Re=5×105, the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are applied to the simulation of the wingsail with the bulges thanks to ANSYS Fluent finite-volume solver based on the SST K-ω models. The grid independence analysis is carried out with the lift and drag coefficients of the wingsail at AOA = 8° and AOA=20°. The results show that while the efficiency of the wingsail is reduced by devising the leading-edge bulges before stall, the bulges help to improve the lift coefficient of the wingsail when stalling. At AOA=22° under the action of the leading-edge tubercles, a convective vortex is formed on the suction surface of the modified wingsail, which reduces the flow loss. So the bulges of the wingsail can delay the stall.


2020 ◽  
Vol 01 (02) ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
Md Rhyhanul Islam Pranto ◽  
Mohammad Ilias Inam

The aim of the work is to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics such as lift coefficient, drag coefficient, pressure distribution over a surface of an airfoil of NACA-4312. A commercial software ANSYS Fluent was used for these numerical simulations to calculate the aerodynamic characteristics of 2-D NACA-4312 airfoil at different angles of attack (α) at fixed Reynolds number (Re), equal to 5×10^5 . These simulations were solved using two different turbulence models, one was the Standard k-ε model with enhanced wall treatment and other was the SST k-ω model. Numerical results demonstrate that both models can produce similar results with little deviations. It was observed that both lift and drag coefficient increase at higher angles of attack, however lift coefficient starts to reduce at α =13° which is known as stalling condition. Numerical results also show that flow separations start at rare edge when the angle of attack is higher than 13° due to the reduction of lift coefficient.


1985 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Wang ◽  
H. F. Jen ◽  
E. O. Hartel

A two-dimensional, boundary-layer program, STAN5, was modified to incorporate a low-Reynolds number version of the K-ε, two-equation turbulence model for the predictions of flow and heat transfer around turbine airfoils. The K-ε, two-equation model with optimized empirical correlations was used to account for the effects of free-stream turbulence and transitional flow. The model was compared with experimental flat plate data and then applied to turbine airfoil heat transfer prediction. A two-zone model was proposed for handling the turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation rate empirically at the airfoil leading edge region. The result showed that the predicted heat transfer coefficient on the airfoil agreed favorably with experimental data, especially for the pressure side. The discrepancy between predictions and experimental data of the suction surface normally occurred at transitional and fully turbulent flow regions.


1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijay K. Garg

A three-dimensional Navier–Stokes code has been used to compare the heat transfer coefficient on a film-cooled, rotating turbine blade. The blade chosen is the ACE rotor with five rows containing 93 film cooling holes covering the entire span. This is the only filmcooled rotating blade over which experimental data is available for comparison. Over 2.278 million grid points are used to compute the flow over the blade including the tip clearance region, using Coakley'sq-ωturbulence model. Results are also compared with those obtained by Garg and Abhari (1997) using the zero-equation Baldwin-Lomax (B-L) model. A reasonably good comparison with the experimental data is obtained on the suction surface for both the turbulence models. At the leading edge, the B-L model yields a better comparison than theq-ωmodel. On the pressure surface, however, the comparison between the experimental data and the prediction from either turbulence model is poor. A potential reason for the discrepancy on the pressure surface could be the presence of unsteady effects due to stator-rotor interaction in the experiments which are not modeled in the present computations. Prediction using the two-equation model is in general poorer than that using the zero-equation model, while the former requires at least 40% more computational resources.


Author(s):  
M S Genç

In this study, a prediction of the transition and stall characteristics of an NACA64A006 thin-aerofoil was numerically simulated by FLUENT using k— kL—ω and k—ω shear-stress transport (SST) transition models, recently developed, and k—ω SST and k—ε turbulence models. Subsonic flow with free stream Mach number ( M∞) of 0.17 and the high Reynolds number ( Re) of 5.8×106 was considered at an angle of attack varying from 2° to 11°. However, the computed results were compared with the experiments of McCollough and Gault. Lift and pressure curves were accurately predicted using the k— kL—ω transition model, while the k—ω SST transition model and the k—ω SST and k—ε turbulence models did not have a good agreement with the experimental results. The k— kL—ω transition model showed that the laminar separation and turbulent reattachment occurred near the leading edge of the NACA64A006 thin aerofoil, which caused the formation of the laminar separation bubble on the suction surface as in the experiments. Consequently, the transition and stalling characteristics of this aerofoil were successfully predicted using FLUENT with the k— kL—ω transition model at high Re number flow.


Author(s):  
Vijay K. Garg

A three-dimensional Navier-Stokes code has been used to compare the heat transfer coefficient on a film-cooled, rotating turbine blade. The blade chosen is the ACE rotor with five rows containing 93 film cooling holes covering the entire span. This is the only film-cooled rotating blade over which experimental data is available for comparison. Over 2.278 million grid points are used to compute the flow over the blade including the tip clearance region, using Coakley’s q-ω turbulence model. Results are also compared with those obtained by Garg and Abhari (1996) using the zero-equation Baldwin-Lomax (B-L) model. A reasonably good comparison with the experimental data is obtained on the suction surface for both the turbulence models. At the leading edge, the B-L model yields a better comparison than the q-ω model. On the pressure surface, however, the comparison between the experimental data and the prediction from either turbulence model is poor. A potential reason for the discrepancy on the pressure surface could be the presence of unsteady effects due to stator-rotor interaction in the experiments which are not modeled in the present computations. Prediction using the two-equation model is in general poorer than that using the zero-equation model, while the former requires at least 40% more computational resources.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (24) ◽  
pp. 8224
Author(s):  
Jan Michna ◽  
Krzysztof Rogowski ◽  
Galih Bangga ◽  
Martin O. L. Hansen

Accurate computation of the performance of a horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) using Blade Element Momentum (BEM) based codes requires good quality aerodynamic characteristics of airfoils. This paper shows a numerical investigation of transitional flow over the DU 91-W2-250 airfoil with chord-based Reynolds number ranging from 3 × 106 to 6 × 106. The primary goal of the present paper is to validate the unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) approach together with the four-equation transition SST turbulence model with experimental data from a wind tunnel. The main computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code used in this work was ANSYS Fluent. For comparison, two more CFD codes with the Transition SST model were used: FLOWer and STAR-CCM +. The obtained airfoil characteristics were also compared with the results of fully turbulent models published in other works. The XFOIL approach was also used in this work for comparison. The aerodynamic force coefficients obtained with the Transition SST model implemented in different CFD codes do not differ significantly from each other despite the different mesh distributions used. The drag coefficients obtained with fully turbulent models are too high. With the lowest Reynolds numbers analyzed in this work, the error in estimating the location of the transition was significant. This error decreases as the Reynolds number increases. The applicability of the uncalibrated transition SST approach for a two-dimensional thick airfoil is up to the critical angle of attack.


Author(s):  
Syed Anjum Haider Rizvi ◽  
Joseph Mathew

At off-design conditions, when the blade Reynolds number is low, a significant part of the blade boundary layer can be transitional. Then, standard RANS models are unable to predict the flows correctly but explicit transition modeling provides some improvement. Since large eddy simulations (LES) are improvements on RANS, the performance of LES was examined by simulating a flow through a linear, compressor cascade for which experimental data are available — specifically at the Reynolds number of 210,000 based on blade chord when transition processes occur over a significant extent of the suction surface. The LES were performed with an explicit filtering approach, applying a low-pass filter to achieve sub-grid-scale modeling. Explicit 8th-order difference formulas were used to obtain high resolution spatial derivative terms. An O-grid was wrapped around the blade with suitable clustering for the boundary layer and regions of large changes along the blade. Turbulent in-flow was provided from a precursor simulation of homogeneous, isotropic turbulence. Two LES and a DNS were performed. The second LES refines the grid in the vicinity of the separation bubble on the suction surface, and along the span. Surface pressure distributions from all simulations agree closely with experiment, thus providing a much better prediction than even transition-sensitive RANS computations. Wall normal profiles of axial velocity and fluctuations also agree closely with experiment. Differences between LES and DNS are small, but the refined grid LES is closer to the DNS almost everywhere. This monotonic convergence, expected of the LES method used, demonstrates its reliability. The pressure surface undergoes transition almost immediately downstream of the leading edge. On the suction surface there are streaks as expected for freestream-turbulence-induced transition, but spots do not appear. Instead, a separating shear layer rolls up and breaks down to turbulence at re-attachment. Both LES capture this process. Skin friction distribution reveals the transition near the re-attachment to occur over an extended region, and subsequent relaxation is slower in the LES. The narrower transition zone in the DNS is indicative of the essential role of smaller scales during transition that should not be neglected in LES. Simulation data also reveal that an assumption of laminar kinetic energy transition models that Reynolds shear stress remains small in the pre-transitional region is supported. The remaining differences in the predictions of such models is thus likely to be the separation-induced transition which preempts the spot formation.


1940 ◽  
Vol 44 (352) ◽  
pp. 338-349
Author(s):  
A. P. West

During the past few years an extensive amount of experimental data on split flaps has been made available to the aircraft industry, through the publications of aeronautical research laboratories, both in this country and abroad. In general, each publication deals with one particular aspect of the problem, and when the effect of wing flaps on the performance of an aircraft is being estimated a certain amount of difficulty may be experienced in deciding which of the many reports available gives results most readily applicable to the case being considered ; and what allowances, if any, should be made for wing taper, flap cut-out, fuselage, etc.In this report the available data has been analysed with a view to answering these questions, and presented in such a form that it may be readily applied to determine the most probable change in the aerodynamic characteristics of a wing that may be expected from the use of this type of flap.From the appendix an estimate of the accuracy of the method can be obtained, as a comparison with full-scale data is given for lift and drag, and for the other flap characteristics the original curves have been reproduced.


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