Analysis of Confined Flows, Airfoils and Wings at Low Reynolds Numbers PDF Download

Author: Araz Panahi
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Languages : en
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Book Description
"This thesis presents a deep analysis of the steady and unsteady viscous flows past airfoils and three-dimensional wings, and of three-dimensional confined flows at low Reynolds numbers. This research work was carried out in several cases studies: (i) steady and unsteady confined viscous flows; (ii) unsteady separations effects on the flow past stationary airfoils; (iii) effect of the ground proximity on the steady and unsteady viscous flows past oscillating and fixed airfoils; (iv) three-dimensional steady flows past wings at low Reynolds numbers. The first part presents an efficient numerical method to solve three-dimensional steady and unsteady flows in a three-dimensional downstream-facing step channel at low Reynolds numbers. A finite-difference formulation and artificial compressibility were used on a stretched staggered grid for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, which is second-order accurate in space and time. The results were found to be in good agreement with the available experimental results. For the first time it was confirmed that the difference between the two-dimensional numerical solutions and the experimental results was due to the effect of the lateral walls in the experimental configuration.The second part is the study of the unsteady effects on stationary airfoils due to unsteady flow separations at low Reynolds numbers. This study was performed with an efficient time-accurate numerical method using a pseudo-time relaxation procedure with artificial compressibility and a factored Alternate-Direction Implicit (ADI) scheme for the pseudo-time integration. The method is successfully validated by comparison with the experimental results obtained by Suwa et al. for triangular airfoils at low Reynolds numbers. It was found that the aerodynamic coefficients of lift and drag displayed periodic variations in time due to the unsteady flow separations occurring at low Reynolds numbers on stationary airfoils at relatively small angles of attack.Analysis of the steady and unsteady flows over airfoils in the proximity of the ground was studied in the third part. Various flight evolutions of the micro-air-vehicles take place in the proximity of the ground or a ceiling, which require the aerodynamic solutions in these conditions at low Reynolds numbers. Solutions are presented for the unsteady lift and drag coefficients of several NACA airfoils in the proximity of the ground. A detailed study of the influence of various geometric and flow parameters, such as the angle of attack, airfoil relative thickness, amplitude and frequency of oscillations and Reynolds number, on the flow separations in the proximity of the ground were carried out in this part. This study also presented the analysis of the unsteady flows past stationary airfoils in the proximity of the ground, aiming to determine the influence of the distance to the ground on these unsteady effects which are generated by the unsteady flow separations on the stationary airfoils at low Reynolds numbers. It was found that these unsteady effects appear at lower angles of attack for the airfoils in the proximity of the ground than in free flight.The fourth and final case study is the three-dimensional analysis of the steady viscous flows past rectangular wings with various NACA airfoil sections at low Reynolds numbers. The solutions are obtained using an efficient numerical method to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flows. The numerical solutions of the aerodynamic lift and drag coefficients obtained by this method are validated with the experimental results obtained by Sunada et al. for rectangular wings. A parametric study of the influence of various geometric and flow parameters, such as wing thickness, wing airfoil camber, angle of attack and Reynolds number is also presented." --