On the aerodynamic loads and flow statistics of airfoil with deformable vortex generators

Abstract

The aerodynamic performances and flow statistics for a Delft University-91-W2-250 airfoil with deformable vortex generators (DVG) were experimentally studied in a wind tunnel across various angle of attacks and wind speeds. A high-resolution force sensor was used to measure the time-averaged lift force, while a planar particle image velocimetry system was applied to characterize the mean velocity and vortex shedding over airfoil surface. The results highlighted that, similar to conventional rigid vortex generators (RVG), DVG can effectively enhance lift coefficient after the stall angle of airfoil with clean surface under low incoming winds. However, the deformation of DVGs increased with the growth of wind speed; this suppressed the effectiveness of wake mixing where the aerodynamic performance of DVGs gradually converged to clean surface configurations. The flow measurements demonstrated that the deformation of DVG can lead to significant decrease in near-wall flow velocities close to the airfoil trailing edge and generate more dispersed vorticity distributions. To further investigate the linkage between DVG deformation and its wake mixing effectiveness, complementary tomographic particle image velocimetry measurements were conducted. The results indicated that the vorticity strength presented monotonic decay with the bending angle of DVG within both near and intermediate wake regions. The capability of DVGs passively adjusts their bending angle, and therefore, the airfoil lift coefficients provide a novel approach to reduce aerodynamic load fluctuations for aircraft within unsteady flows.