Ultra-Light Aircraft Airfoil Design and Characteristics
Author(s):
Mohammed Saleh Mohammed, Taha Ahmad Abdullah, Khalid Ibrahim Hassan
Affiliation(s):
Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Mosul, Iraq.
Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The aim of this research was to find out whether it is possible to obtain a new airfoil design for an ultra-light aircraft, geometrically in which the aerodynamic characteristics are intermediate between two known airfoils (NACA 652 -415 and NLF (1)-0215). For this purpose, a geometric design philosophy has been applied as a first step and here it’s described; Using CAD software (CATIA) reference airfoils (NACA 652 -415 and NLF (1)-0215.) are drawn geometrically at the same coordinates, from the same starting point and at the same scale. In total, four new airfoils configurations were generated, by drawing the required coordinates of the new possible models between the coordinates of the two mentioned airfoils. CFD simulations were applied to new and reference airfoils using fluent to verify aerodynamic characteristic. The simulation will be done at the same conditions corresponding to angle of attack, velocity and Reynolds numbers. A comparison of the obtained characteristic of new airfoils also be done with the available data for the reference airfoils. The results obtained from this study will be tabulated and graph of the relationship between the Lift to the Angles of Attack will be plotted. The angle of attack as a variable varied from -14o to +14o. Results show a useful method that enables to create new airfoils, geometrically, and it also enables to control the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft, so that it can provide a large number of options among the reference airfoils. Here, the designer is able to choose the characteristics with high accuracy so that they could fit the purpose of the designed aircraft, based on the aerodynamic characteristics of known airfoils, because the characteristics of the new airfoils are intermediate between the references. And whenever the geometric points of the new one is close to the points of the reference one, their characteristics approach these of the reference airfoil