Lift enhancement of an airfoil using a Gurney flap and vortex generators

Abstract

Experimental measurements of surface pressure distributions and wake profiles were obtained for an NACA 4412 airfoil to determine the lift, drag, and pitching-moment coefficients for various configurations. The addition of a Gurney flap increased the maximum lift coefficient from 1.49 up to 1.96, and decreased the drag near the maximum lift condition. There was, however, a drag increment at low-to-moderate lift coefficients. Additional nose-down pitching moment was also generated by increasing the Gurney flap height. Good correlation was observed between the experiment and Navier-Stokes computations of the airfoil with a Gurney flap. Two deploy able configurations were also tested with the hinge line forward of the trailing edge by one and 1.5 flap heights, respectively. These configurations provided performance comparable to that of the Gurney flap. The application of vortex generators to the baseline airfoil delayed boundary-layer separation and yielded an increase in the maximum lift coefficient of 0.34. In addition, there was a significant drag penalty associated with the vortex generators, which suggests that they should be placed where they will be concealed during cruise. The two devices were also shown to work well in concert.