Improving airfoil performance by designed blowing

Abstract

Modern trends in the development of urban air vehicles and small-scale unmanned air vehicles require them to be as efficient as possible. One option is to improve their aerodynamic performance by semi-active boundary layer control (BLC) techniques, that are more economic and accessible through 3D printing, such as injection/blowing. Flow control generally serves to reduce BL thickness and friction drag, as well as to delay transition and separation. This computational study investigates and quantifies the change in lift and drag coefficients of NACA 23012 airfoil at the critical angle-of-attack (AoA) at M = 0.18 and Re = 1.8 million. Flow simulations are performed using the finite volume method in ANSYS Fluent. Clean and controlled flows are considered steady, incompressible, and viscous. Equations governing the flow are closed by k-ω SST turbulence model. The adopted numerical set-up is validated by available experimental data. Main observations on the possible improvements of aerodynamic performance at a higher angle-of-attack are presented and discussed.