1 of 5

Ziad Alaswad

MASc. Mechanical Engineer, EIT

TURBULENT AIR FOIL

What?

  • The module is drawn from MAE 5230 Fluid Dynamics at Cornell University
  • This project focused on developing a 2D turbulent airfoil flow problem in ANSYS Fluent
  • Pressure coefficient variation over the foil and lift & drag coefficients were targeted in this project
  • The results from ANSYS Fluent were compared with the experimental data from NASA

2 of 5

Ziad Alaswad

MASc. Mechanical Engineer, EIT

TURBULENT AIR FOIL

Geometry and Mesh

  • Sphere of Influence was used to refine the area around the blade
  • The mesh was refined around the blade with a bias towards the leading and trailing edges

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3 of 5

Ziad Alaswad

MASc. Mechanical Engineer, EIT

TURBULENT AIR FOIL

Boundary Conditions

  • The velocity inlet BC was divided into x and y components
  • The gauge pressure was set to zero
  • k-epsilon turbulence model was used with standard wall functions

Pressure outlet

walls

Velocity inlet

4 of 5

Ziad Alaswad

MASc. Mechanical Engineer, EIT

TURBULENT AIR FOIL

Results

  • The velocity and pressure contours a realistic
  • At the trailing edge, the adverse pressure gradient on the upper body is affecting the viscous shear layer thickness, while the downside of the body is not showing the thickening of the boundary layer due to the specified velocity inlet flow direction
  • For the turbulence kinetic energy

contours, it can be noticed that

most of the kinetic energy is

generated in the upper body

where the adverse pressure is.

Then, the energy gets convicted

to the wake.

Pressure Contours

Velocity Contours

Turbulence Kinetic Energy Contours

5 of 5

Ziad Alaswad

MASc. Mechanical Engineer, EIT

TURBULENT AIR FOIL

Validation & Verification

 

Coefficient of pressure along the airfoil: Numerical VS Experimental