| Resumo: |
Recently, the wavy leading edge airfoils, inspired by the humpback whale´s flipper, have been investigated, as flow control mechanisms, at low Reynolds numbers in order to improve aerodynamic performance in this particular flow regime. The overall aim of this work is to investigate the airfoil geometric effects on wavy leading edge phenomena in the low Reynolds number regime. Experimental investigations were carried out correlating force measurements with mini-tuft and oil visualizations in order to understand the airfoil thickness effects on wavy leading edge phenomena. Three sets of airfoil thickness were tested (NACA 0012, NACA 0020 and NACA 0030), each set consisting of smooth plus three wavy configurations (A=0.11c, ?=0.40c; A=0.03c, ?=0.40c and A=0.03c, ?=0.11c); Reynolds number was varied between 50,000 and 290,000. The results present many findings that were not possible in previous studies due the fact that these investigations were constrained to specific geometries and/or flow conditions. At higher Reynolds number, the decrease in airfoil thickness leads the airfoils to leading edge stall characteristics causing the lowest aerodynamic deterioration for the thinnest wavy airfoil as compared to smooth configuration in the pre-stall regime. In addition, the results show impressive tubercle performance in the lowest Reynolds number. For any tubercle geometry and airfoil thickness, the wavy leading edge airfoils present higher maximum lift values as compared to smooth configurations showing an unprecedented increase in performance for a full-span model tested in the literature. The flow visualizations present two flow mechanisms triggered by secondary flow: three-dimensional laminar separation bubbles and vortical structures. Regarding three-dimensional laminar bubbles, the results confirm some of the few previous experimental and numerical studies, and presents for the first time these structures as a very efficient flow control mechanism in the post-stall regime justifying the impressive increase in maximum lift in the lowest Reynolds number. Besides that, two characteristics of laminar bubbles, \"tipped-bubbles\" and \"elongated-bubbles\", are identified with different effects in the pre-stall regime. This thesis presents higher tubercle performance for thinner airfoils (NACA 0012) and/or lower Reynolds number conditions (Re=50,000) showing clearly that an optimum performance lead the \"tubercles\" to operate under conditions of leading edge flow separation conditions. Therefore, a design space for tubercles conducted to leading edge stall characteristics confirming the hypothesis of Stanway (2008) eight years before. |
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