Flow over an airfoil Solidworks

Model:

An airfoil shape curve was created from xyz co-ordinates of Boeing 103 Airfoil found in the NACA database.

The unit system used is MKS system.

The curve was converted into sketch entity using convert entity feature.

The sketch was closed and extruded (0.5 m) to form a solid model of the airfoil.

Simulation:

A time-based external simulation is run with air as the medium.

Initial velocity of the air is 600 m/s in x-direction.

The computational domain is as seen below:

For different angle of attacks, the sketch of the airfoil is edited and rotate entity is used to achieve the necessary angle of attack. The rotation is about origin (0,0,0)

The simulation parameters are kept the same for all the simulations.

Mesh settings are as seen below:

Surface goals with Force (X) and Force (Y) parameters are set for the airfoil surface.

The results of the different scenarios are shown below:

Angle of attack = 10 deg

Angle of attack = 8 deg

Angle of attack = 6 deg

Angle of attack = 4 deg

Angle of attack = 2 deg

Angle of attack = 0 deg

Here, the SG Force (X) is the drag force and SG Force (Y) is the lift force.

Plot of Drag force vs angle of attack:

Plot of Lift force vs angle of attack:

We can see that as the angle of attack increases, both the drag force and lift force increases.

When the angle of attack is zero there is negative lift force. i.e. The flight would stall and lose altitude.

The lift force increases aggressively whereas the drag force increases gradually.

The plot of lift force vs angle of attack is nearly linear.