NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS ON THE INFLUENCE OF SURFACE MODIFICATIONS INTEGRATED WITH VORTEX GENERATORS ON NACA0010 AIRFOIL

Abstract

Vortex generators and surface modifications are done to reduce the wake region and increase the aerodynamics efficiencies of an airfoil. The performance test of NACA0010 airfoil with various types of surface modifications integrated with vortex generators and comparison to a conventional rigid body airfoil is presented in this paper. The characteristics of airfoils were tested using numerical analysis and was validated using AF100 subsonic wind tunnel testing. Both the computations and experimentations were conducted at constant chord Reynolds number of 143,500. The test data shows the comparison between conventional NACA0010 airfoil with three types of surface modifications integrated with vortex generators at an angle of attack of zero degree. This study suggests that the airfoil with strips and vortex generators tend to increase lift to drag ratio most effectively. However, addition of vortex generators and surface modification was less effective in low angle of attack.