Prediction of the Lift and Drag Coefficients of a Moving Airfoil Using Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to numerically simulate, analyze, and visualize turbulent flow around rotating aerodynamic shaped 3-dimentional geometries using a custom-made software suite. The computational fluid dynamic program used for this research is called Numerical Wind Tunnel, NWT, which was developed by Dr. J. Militzer and his students over the last 15 years. In order to meet various simulation and prediction requirements of this research, the NWT was modified and improved by implementing many new features; in addition, many bugs have been fixed. Key features added to the NWT include improved boundary layer handling for Detached Eddy Simulation method, new implementations of Surrounding Cell Method and rewritten Lift and Drag Coefficients calculation algorithms, and new approaches to Mesh Refinement and Adaptation Criteria. The improved software is tested extensively by simulating turbulent flows around a rotating National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) 0009 airfoil, and test results are compared with both experimental data and previous simulation data. The research was successful mainly because of the much-improved accuracy in predicting static lift and drag coefficients. Another achievement of this research is that the software also successfully predicted various events during an airfoil dynamic stall condition, which is a result of both accurate flow prediction and a NWT feature called Automatic Anisotropic Grid Adaptation.