Causal mechanism behind the stall delay by airfoil’s pitching-up motion

Abstract

Why the stall of an airfoil can be significantly delayed by its pitching-up motion? Various attempts have been proposed to answer this question over the past half century, but none is satisfactory. In this letter we prove that a chain of vorticity-dynamics processes at accelerating boundary is fully responsible for the causal mechanism underlying this peculiar phenomenon. The local flow behavior is explained by a simple potential-flow model.

Keywords

• Dynamic stall
• Boundary vorticity flux
• Unsteady aerodynamics