Numerical simulation and experimental validation of a manufactured wing profile

Sammanfattning: The background for this thesis originates from a study of the flow characteristics for an airfoil of the type NACA0018. The aim for this thesis was to evaluate how the characteristics of the flow over the NACA0018 profile depend on surface roughness. Airfoils were manufactured in Aluminum by Computer Numerical Control-milling and in polylactide polymer using a 3D-printer, where some of the profile surfaces were postprocessed with sandpaper in various grain sizes. The surface roughness of the profiles was evaluated in a 3D optical profilometer using white light interferometry from Filmetrics. By that technique 3D surface plots were created. The manufactured airfoils were tested in a wind tunnel where the achieved data was made dimensionless for comparative purposes. The computational fluid dynamics simulations were performed in Ansys Fluent and compared against the wind tunnel data as well as with the data from a previously made study at htw saar. The results from the wind tunnel tests show that the surface roughness has an effect on the flow characteristic of the airfoil, where different angles of stall were observed in the comparison. The difference for the dimensionless numbers coefficient of lift and drag show that the manufactured aluminum airfoil performs better compared to the 3D-Printed airfoil in this study. It has a higher performance mean value for both of these coefficients in a span of angles between 0 and 30 degrees. When compared, the results from the simulations and wind tunnel experiments do match in some cases, where the dimensionless coefficients and stall angle coheres. Further studies based on this report are recommended, where small geometric changes to the profile could be tested and validated.