Aerodynamic performance simulation of three selected airfoils

Abstract

This work presents the lift and drag coefficient curves, as functions of the angle of attack, for the NACA0012, S809 and SG6043 airfoils in turbulent flow conditions. The objective is to identify the airfoil with the best aerodynamic performance under conditions that are descriptive of small scale wind turbine. With the use of OpenFOAM, an analysis was done by numerical simulation. In the case of the NACA0012 airfoil, it was found that the performance is insensitive to the changes in turbulence and the Reynold number. The aerodynamic response of the S809 airfoil is to increase both the drag and lift as the turbulence increases. The SG6043 airfoil responds the best out of the three in turbulent flow, given that the lift curves mostly increase with the turbulence. The curves reported in this work are new and not found in previous literature.

Keywords: aerodynamics, lift, drag, turbulence

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