Unsteady effects in flows past stationary airfoils with Gurney flaps due to unsteady flow separations at low Reynolds numbers

Abstract

This paper presents the analysis of the unsteady flows past stationary airfoils equipped with Gurney flaps at low Reynolds numbers, aiming to study the unsteady behavior of the aerodynamic coefficients due to the flow separations occurring at these Reynolds numbers. The Gurney flaps are simple but very efficient lift-increasing devices, which due to their mechanical simplicity are of particular interest for the small size micro-air-vehicles (MAV) flying at low speed and very low Reynolds number. The unsteady aerodynamic analysis is performed with an efficient time-accurate numerical method developed for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations at low Reynolds numbers, which is second-order-accurate in time and space. The paper presents solutions for the unsteady aerodynamic coefficients of lift and drag and for the lift-to-drag ratio of several symmetric and cambered airfoils with Gurney flaps. It was found that although the airfoil is considered stationary, starting from a relatively small incidence (about 8 degrees) the flow becomes unsteady due to the unsteadiness of the flow separations occurring at low Reynolds numbers, and the aerodynamic coefficients display periodic oscillations in time. A detailed study is presented in the paper on the influence of various geometric and flow parameters, such as the Gurney flap height, Reynolds number, airfoil relative thickness and relative camber, on the aerodynamic coefficients of lift, drag and lift-to-drag ratio. The flow separation is also studied with the aid of flow visualizations illustrating the changes in the flow pattern at various moments in time.

Keywords

• Unsteady flows
• Low Reynolds number
• Subsonic Aerodynamics
• Computational Aerodynamics
• Viscous Flows