Numerical Study of Aerodynamic Forces of Two Airfoils in Tandem Configuration at Low Reynolds Number

For a tandem airfoil configuration, an airfoil is placed in the wake of an upstream airfoil. This interaction affects the aerodynamic forces of the airfoils, especially the downstream one. In the present study a tandem configuration consists of an upstream pitching airfoil and a downstream stationary airfoil is investigated. This study aims to investigate the role of reduced frequency and pitch amplitude of the upstream airfoil’s motion on lift and drag coefficients of two airfoils. These two parameters play an important role in the formation of vortices. The investigation is done for Selig-Donovan 7003 (SD7003) airfoils at low Reynolds number of 30,000 using a computational fluid dynamics. Incompressible URANS equations were employed for solving the flow field. It was found that for a fixed reduced frequency of 0.5 thrust is produced on the hindfoil for a part of cycle for different pitch amplitudes from light to deep stall while for a fixed pitch amplitude at different reduced frequencies high level of thrust or drag can be produced. The reason is related to the type and intensity of vortex-blade interaction.

Resolving Pitching Airfoil Transonic Aerodynamics by Cfd Data Modeling

A detailed numerical study of harmonically pitching airfoils of NACA00 series is presented here. Based on the analysis of the CFD results, a hypothesis is made that a simple data model can capture the dynamics of the airfoils in pitch. The data model is based on the cl ?? (lift coefficient - angle of attack) hysteresis loops that retain generic geometrical characteristics for a wide range of reduced frequency, k, encountered in flutter in transonic flows for all the NACA00 airfoils considered. The model was trained on a subset of the considered NACA00 airfoils and then tested on the remaining NACA00 set, for a subset of the reduced frequencies. The model predictions of the cl ? ? hysteresis loops for the test set are shown to be in excellent agreement with the CFD results for the range of k typical of transonic flutter. The data model offers a paradigm shift in the prediction of transonic flow dynamics of pitching airfoils and will guide the development of a new transfer function that will be incorporated in a new aeroelastic framework leading to an appropriate transonic flutter model for use in the development of future aircraft.

Numerical Investigation of a Dynamic Stall on a Single Rotating Blade

Dynamic stall is a phenomenon on the retreating blade of a helicopter which can lead to excessive control loads. In order to understand dynamic stall and fill the gap between the investigations on pitching wings and full helicopter rotor blades, a numerical investigation of a single rotating and pitching blade is carried out. The flow phenomena thereupon including the Ω-shaped dynamic stall vortex, the interaction of the leading edge vortex with the tip vortex, and a newly noticed vortex structure originating inboard are examined; they show similarities to pitching wings, while also possessing their unique features of a rotating system. The leading edge/tip vortex interaction dominates the post-stall stage. A newly noticed swell structure is observed to have a great impact on the load in the post-stall stage. With such a high Reynolds number, the Coriolis force exerted on the leading edge vortex is negligible compared to the pressure force. The force history/vortex structure of the slice r/R = 0.898 is compared with a 2D pitching airfoil with the same harmonic pitch motion, and the current simulation shows the important role played by the swell structure in the recovery stage.