Numerical Solution of Inviscid and Viscous Flow Across NACA0010 Airfoil with different Angles of Attack

Abstract

The role of the airfoil in all engineering fields is very important. Airfoil designs are utilized in various applications such as aircraft wings, helicopter rotor blades, sails, fans, and turbine compressors. In the case of aircraft, airfoils are accountable for generating lift force and determining if it is adequate for balancing the aircraft's weight, as well as determining the amount of drag force that should be applied to the body. They also play a vital role in optimizing blade performance, as well as the heat and operational efficiency of turbines. Airfoils are moving in the flow passing by them, and they show different responses based on many parameters such as whether the flow is smooth or turbulent, viscous or inviscid, flow velocity, angle of attack, multidimensionality of velocity components, etc. For aeronautics vehicles and wind turbines, a large number of studies have been conducted to analyze aerodynamic forces on two dimensional airfoils as well as flow phenomena associated with different Reynolds numbers. Main object of this research is to figure out the flow characteristics around the airfoil body and analyze aerodynamic performance of airfoil. In order to investigate the computational efficiency of flow models, numerical examination has been done for flow across NACA0010 airfoil by using 2D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver, ANSYS FLUENT 18.0, at various angle of attack (0o to 13o) for inviscid flow and (-30o to 30o) for viscous flow. Lift and drag coefficients and C p for lower and upper airfoil surface and velocity diagram based on different angle of attack has been solved for the sample under two different flow regimes. The contours of velocity were simulated, and stall point was noticed from 13° angle of attack in inviscid flow and 24o in viscous flow. In the non-viscous state, lift coefficient and drag coefficient was higher, in comparison with viscous flow.