Research on aspect ratio and angle of attack for optimizing the performance oƒf airfoil NACA 24112

Background and overall Objective

The overall objective of this very paper is to optimize the design of airfoil, specifically by exploring the effect of changing aspect ratio and angle of attack on aircraft performance, in a simplified case with certain initial conditions and boundary conditions.

Methodology

Creation of 3D model in Solidworks
Creation of geometry is conducted by using 2D coordinates data from database of "airfoil database research" and then extruded for certain lengths, which are also affect the aspect ratio.

The airfoil is rotated for different degrees and this also determines the angle of attack.

Aspect ratio: ratio between the wingspan and the chord length. The values of 1, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75 and 2.00 are selected for exploration in the paper.
Angle of attack: the angle at which the chord of an aircraft's wing meets the relative wind. The values of 0°, 5°, 10°, 15° and 20° are selected for exploration in the paper.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Set up

After the model is created, it can be passed to CFD simulation and the initial parameters of the simulation are specified as follows.  

Mathematical Model

The formula for calculating drag and lift coefficients are listed as the following.

Where:
Fd and Fl are drag force and lift force, respectively. They are calculated from the results of simulation. ρ is the density of the fluid, which is air in this case of 1.2004 kg ∗ m3; v is the velocity of the fluid, which is set as 34.3 ms−1 for the initial condition.

Ap and Af are the frontal and the planform area of the airfoil. The specific derivations and calculations of area can be found in the actual paper.