Novel Design of Airfoil for Low Reynolds Number Applications

Abstract

In the last few decades, the world has seen an uprise in the number of low Reynolds number applications ranging from UAV bound logistics, environmental monitoring, aerial photography to general surveillance. This paper proposes a novel airfoil design, which we have named the SCIVAA1210, for low Reynolds number applications and is derived from historical data of the other conventional airfoils, namely, S1223 and CH10. The name has been derived from the initials of the parent airfoils and the initials of the team who came up with the novel design. The last four digits, 12 and 10, represents the thickness and camber respectively in % of chord. Our airfoil was initially tested on a low fidelity, vortex panel method-based solver, XFLR5 to get an initial estimation of the airfoil’s performance compared to its parent airfoils. SCIVAA1210 was then analysed using high fidelity commercially available RANS based CFD code, ANSYS Fluent. Since no earlier data were available for the new design, the parent airfoils, namely the CH10 and S1223 were both tested and validated with the experimental data available for the airfoil and then the same settings were used for the CFD analysis for SCIVAA1210 airfoil. The trend generated from the CFD analysis was found to be in agreement with that of the XFLR5 data and in line with the trend that was obtained from the historical data of the parent airfoils. However, it was noted that the value of the drag co-efficient obtained from the CFD analysis was considerably higher than that of the XFLR5 data. One possible explanation for this is the use of an unstructured mesh and possibly, the quality of the mesh used. The findings from the study suggests that the trend of SCIVAA1210 resembles the performance of CH10 at lower angle of attack and S1223 at higher angles of attack. In conclusion, SCIVAA1210 was found to have a maximum lift co-efficient of 2.0494926 at critical angle of attack of 15deg, which is significantly higher than its parents, indicating a delayed stall and better aerodynamic efficiency.