The Effect of Bird Strike on the Performance of a NACA 2412

Abstract

Damage to the leading edge in the form of dents due to bird strikes causes a decrease in the airfoil performance. Therefore, the current study provides a numerical analysis of the aerodynamic characteristics of the original NACA 2412 airfoil and the dent airfoil with depth variation. Several airfoils were compared for their lift and drag coefficients at an angle of attack of 0◦ to 6◦. The free air flow velocity was kept constant at the Reynolds number of 3.1 × 106. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used, employing the k-ω SST turbulence model to obtain accurate calculations on the airfoil surface. The simulation results revealed that the dented NACA 2412 airfoil lift coefficient (CL) decreased while the drag coefficient (CD) increased, where the value varied with changes in the angle of attack and depth of the dent.

Keywords

• bird strike
• lift
• drag
• cfd