Challenge

Flow over an airfoil

Flow over an airfoil Using Solid Works

Abstract:

In this Project, CFD analysis of the two-dimensional subsonic ow over a NACA 0017 airfoil at various angles of attack and compare the lift and drag force. The geometry of the airfoil is created using SOLIDWORKS. CFD analysis is carried out using Flow Simulation Wizard at various angles of attack from 0° to 10° with an interval of 2°. Velocity distributions over NACA-0017 airfoil for different angles of attack are presented. Drag Force and Lift Force are plotted and compared.

1. Introduction:

Airfoil is de ned as the cross-section of a body that is placed in an airstream in order to generate useful aerodynamic force. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has fascinated researchers, as it is a fast, accurate and reliable method of analyzing the variation of hydrodynamic properties of the ow over and within a body. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical methods and algorithms
to solve complex problems involving fluid flow.

Angle of attack is the angle between the oncoming air or relative wind and a reference line on the airplane or wing. Sometimes, the reference line is a line connecting the leading edge and trailing edge at some average point on the wing.

Effect of angle of attack:
Increases as the angle of attack increase the lift force increase proportionately. And a certain point, called critical angle of attack, upper surface ow is more separated and the airfoil or wing is producing its maximum coecient of lift.
The study of airfoil behavior to varying angle of attacks is made in order to determine the best possible dimensions for practical conditions. In most airplanes, this is about 16 to 18 degrees. During a cruise, the requirement is to maintain the angle of attack where the total drag on the airplane is minimum so as to use the minimum thrust and therefore, minimum fuel consumption. This could occur at an angle of about 3 to 5 degrees.

The present study aims to analyze the ow eld for NACA-0017 airfoil at various angles of attack and also to compare the lift and drag force.

2. Geometry and Mesh Generation:

3. Inputs and Boundary Conditions:

The problem consists of ow around an airfoil at various angles of attack (0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 degrees). The inputs and boundary conditions are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Inputs and boundary conditions

4. Procedure:

i. An airfoil is created by using convert entities then line command.

ii. For the different angle of attacks rotate entities is used.

iii. The airfoil is extruded to 0.5 mm. Now save the file.

iv. The flow simulation is created using the wizard menu.

v. The analysis type is selected as external. Time-dependent is selected.

vi. Total analysis time is selected as 5 sec and output time is 1sec.

vii. The uid is selected as air and velocity parameter over X-direction is selected as 600m/s and then click finish.

viii. Now a computational domain is created by using the 2D option.

ix. The computational domain is expanded along both y-directions and x-direction in such a way that the length after the wake region should be 5 times the
length ahead of wake region.

x. The Global mesh is de ned and the local mesh is de ned by selecting the surface. It is re ned up to a level of 3.

xi. The goals option is selected then force x and force y selected after selecting the surface.

xii. Run the simulation.

xiii. Now a cut plot is made along x-direction and velocity over the airfoil is selected.

xiv. Color re ning is given 200.

xv. A goal plot is plotted between drag force along the x-direction and lift along the y-axis.

xvi. The above procedure is followed for different attack angles and the following results are used to plot the necessary graphs.

5. Results:


Results are computed and studied on different angle of attacks.

let's run one by one on the different angle of attacks.

Here,

Integrated force along the x-axis is Drag force.

Integrated force along the y-axis is Lift force.

Case 1: Angle of attack at 0°

Results calculated.

Cut Plot: Velocity Contour

Graph:

i. Drag Force

ii. Lift Force

Case 2: Angle of attack 2°

Results Calculated

Cut Plot: Velocity Contour

Goal Name Unit Value Averaged Value Minimum Value Maximum Value Progress [%] Use In Convergence Delta Criteria
SG Force (X) 1 [N] 21924.58751 22023.36652 21915.02582 22097.85708 100 Yes 11.66984306 417.7433399
SG Force (Y) 2 [N] 54454.02812 54228.81225 54084.82756 54562.4715 100 Yes 164.8677917 433.2266899

Graph:

i. Drag Force

ii. Lift Force

Case 3: Angle of attack 4°

Cut Plot: Velocity Contour



Goal Name Unit Value Averaged Value Minimum Value Maximum Value Progress [%] Use In Convergence Delta Criteria
SG Force (X) 1 [N] 6511.029898 6507.442018 6498.998944 6516.119458 100 Yes 2.804151244 120.2817556
SG Force (Y) 2 [N] 25473.56992 25465.34027 25387.36015 25516.54751 100 Yes 15.29351174 249.0199463

Graph:


i. Drag Force

ii. Lift Force

Case 4: Angle of attack 6°

Cut Plot: Velocity Contour



Goal Name Unit Value Averaged Value Minimum Value Maximum Value Progress [%] Use In Convergence Delta Criteria
SG Force (X) 1 [N] 1391.357594 1388.136608 1384.73165 1391.525131 100 Yes 0.890641059 25.33297643
SG Force (Y) 2 [N] 6093.465098 6089.520291 6081.024796 6096.72992 100 Yes 4.451969338 71.94253892

Graph:


i. Drag Force

ii. Lift Force

Case 5: Angle of attack 8°

Cut Plot: Velocity Contour

Goal Name Unit Value Averaged Value Minimum Value Maximum Value Progress [%] Use In Convergence Delta Criteria
SG Force (X) 1 [N] 12221.0379 12231.64953 12216.98111 12253.31593 100 Yes 3.822494513 223.0370047
SG Force (Y) 2 [N] 51767.21108 51797.11306 51730.05401 51895.1293 100 Yes 13.31492666 703.8465728

Graph:

i. Drag Force

ii. Lift Force

Case 6: Angle of attack 10°

Cut Plot: Velocity Contour

Goal Name Unit Value Averaged Value Minimum Value Maximum Value Progress [%] Use In Convergence Delta Criteria
SG Force (X) 1 [N] 41339.82676 41346.74975 41253.11841 41439.23225 100 Yes 29.13094085 775.7932054
SG Force (Y) 2 [N] 165336.5276 165374.3965 164974.3904 165718.5727 100 Yes 142.0992325 2620.440046

Graph:

i. Drag Force

ii. Lift Force

5.1. Calculated Drag Force And Lift Force of all the angle of attack

Table 2: Comparison study

Graph:

Drag Force

Lift Force

Comparing Drag force vs Lift Force:

To compare the characteristics of the drag and lift force the following graph is prepared.

6. Conclusions:

  • With the help of SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation, successful analysis of the NACA-0017 airfoil has been carried at various angles of attack (0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 degrees) and following observation has been made.
  • With the increase in angle of attack, the number of iterations required to give the result get reduced.
  • With the increase in angle of attack, Drag force increases slowly and lift force increases rapidly.
  • With the increase in angle of attack, the velocity of air over the airfoil increased
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