Numerical Investigations of Membrane Surface Effects on NACA 643- 218 Airfoil

Abstract

This paper presents two dimensional fluid structure interaction (FSI) CFD analysis on the effect of skin thickness and Reynolds number on the aerodynamic performance of NACA 643-218 airfoil. Numerical investigations were performed using FLUENT 6.3 fluid flow solver and ABAQUS 6.8-1 structural solver. Coupling of both solvers in real time mode was accomplished with the Mesh based parallel Code Coupling Interface (MpCCI 3.1). The predicted and experimental results were found to be in excellent match. Generally, the results showed that the aerodynamic lift increases while drag decreases with the decrease of membrane thickness.