Aerodynamic Analysis of Variable Camber-Morphing Airfoils with Substantial Camber Deflections

Abstract

In recent years, morphing wings have become not only a concept, but an aerodynamic solution for the aviation industry to take a step forward toward future technologies. However, continuously morphing airfoils became an interesting answer to provide green energy solutions. In this paper, the authors conducted experimental research on a continuously camber-morphing airfoil using the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods. The main objective of this work was to research a variety of morphing airfoils with different camber deflections. An average velocity distribution and turbulence distribution were compared and are discussed. The two-dimensional PIV results were compared to the CFD simulations to validate the numerical method’s accuracy and obtain the aerodynamic coefficient’s trends. A further comparison revealed that morphing airfoils have better aerodynamic performance than conventional airfoils for very low camber deflections and create substantial amounts of drag for significant camber deflections.

Numerical Investigation of a Novel Type of Rotor Working in a Palisade Configuration

“…The validation process utilized a NACA 0012 symmetrical airfoil, the k-ω SST turbulence model, and an imported FAMILY II (2-D) 897 × 257 NASA mesh. This validation was previously conducted in studies on airfoil [54] and aircraft aerodynamics [55], demonstrating satisfactory accuracy when compared to experimental data [54,56,57].…”