Numerical Analysis of the Aerodynamic Characteristics of NACA-4312 Airfoil

Abstract

The aim of the work is to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics such as lift coefficient, drag coefficient, pressure distribution over a surface of an airfoil of NACA-4312. A commercial software ANSYS Fluent was used for these numerical simulations to calculate the aerodynamic characteristics of 2-D NACA-4312 airfoil at different angles of attack (α) at fixed Reynolds number (Re), equal to 5×10^5 . These simulations were solved using two different turbulence models, one was the Standard k-ε model with enhanced wall treatment and other was the SST k-ω model. Numerical results demonstrate that both models can produce similar results with little deviations. It was observed that both lift and drag coefficient increase at higher angles of attack, however lift coefficient starts to reduce at α =13° which is known as stalling condition. Numerical results also show that flow separations start at rare edge when the angle of attack is higher than 13° due to the reduction of lift coefficient.