Numerical Study Of Unsteady Low Reynolds Number Wing Performance

Numerical Study of Unsteady Low-reynolds Number Wing Performance

Unsteady motions of airfoils at low Reynolds numbers were studied computationally using low-order vortex lattice methods and using two high-order methods: a Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes code and an Immersed Boundary method. Results from the low-order methods compared well with experimental and computational results in the literature for small reduced amplitudes and frequencies. The high-order methods were compared with experiments on high intensity pitch and plunging motions at Reynolds numbers of 10,000 and 40,000. The pitch (rotation about the quarter chord) and plunge motions were at reduced frequencies of 3.93 and with kinematically equivalent amplitudes of effective angle of attack at the quarter-chord location. For the plunge cases, agreement between computation and experiment was qualitatively excellent and quantitatively acceptable, but for the pitch cases, the wake structure in the experiment was markedly different from that predicted by both computations, which were however similar among one another. In all cases, Reynolds number effects were found to be negligible. On-going research aims to determine the parameters necessary for pitch-plunge equivalence and also resolve the poor experiment-computation agreement for pitch.

Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports

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