Flow Simulation over an Airfoil using SolidWorks
AIM: You will be running simulations on NACA air foils.
OBJECTIVE:
- Model the flow over a NACA0017 airfoil
- For the angle of attacks 0,2,4,6,8,10 compare the lift and drag forces
SOLUTION:
Angle of Attacks:
In aerodynamics, angle of attack specifies the angle between the chord line of the wing of a fixed-wing aircraft and the vector representing the relative motion between the aircraft and the atmosphere. Since a wing can have twist, a chord line of the whole wing may not be definable, so an alternate reference line is simply defined. Often, the chord line of the root of the wing is chosen as the reference line. Another choice is to use a horizontal line on the fuselage as the reference line (and also as the longitudinal axis). Some authors do not use an arbitrary chord line but use the zero lift axis where, by definition, zero angle of attack corresponds to zero coefficient of lift.
Procedure:
- Initally get the required airfoil from the airfoil database and import the airfoil in the solidworks flow simulations.
- Then open a sketch, close the airfoil at the end and set the angle of attacks of air.
- Then extrude to some assumption length and save the file in the computer.
- Now open the wizard and set required conditions like external flow, time dependent, air medium, and velocity value.
- Open the computational domain and increase the domain size, so that we can get perfect results.
- Then set the global goals and surface goals and provide the local mesh grid. The fine size is set to 3.
- Now run the flow simulations, we get the drag force plot and contour plots in the solver tab.
- After solving all iterations, create a velocity cut plots and save the plot as image.
- Then open the surface goals (i.e drag force and lift force) and show the plots and save it.
- Hence, the flow simulation is done on airfoil.
Case-1, 0 degree of attack:
Velocity Distribution
Drag Force plot
Lift Force plot
Drag and Lift Force values
Case-2, 2 degree of attack:
Velocity Distribution
Drag Force plot
Lift Force plot
Drag and Lift Force values
Case-3, 4 degree of attack:
Velocity Distribution
Drag Force plot
Lift Force plot
Drag and Lift Force values
Case-4, 6 degree of attack:
Velocity Distribution
Drag Force plot
Lift Force plot
Drag and Lift Force values
Case-5, 8 degree of attack:
Velocity Distribution
Drag Force plot
Lift Force plot
Drag and Lift Force values
Case-6, 10 degree of attack:
Velocity Distribution
Drag Force plot
Lift Force plot
Drag and Lift Force values
CONCLUSION:
- Lift force increase with increase in angle of attack upto critical angle of attack, after which it tends to decrease.
- At 0 degree angle of attack, the lift force is ZERO.
- Drag force is also increase with increasing the angle of the attacks.
- Lift force also increase with increasing the velocity of air.