Flow characteristics over NACA4412 airfoil at low Reynolds number

Wind Engineering and Aerodynamic Research Group, Department of Energy Systems Engineering, Erciyes University, Kayseri, Turkey

^a Corresponding author: kemalkoca@erciyes.edu.tr

Published online: 28 March 2016

Abstract

In this study, the flow phenomena over NACA4412 were experimentally observed at various angle of attack and Reynolds number of 25000, 50000 and 75000, respectively. NACA4412 airfoil was manufactured at 3D printer and each tips of the wing were closed by using plexiglas to obtain two-dimensional airfoil. The experiments were conducted at low speed wind tunnel. The force measurement and hot-wire experiments were conducted to obtain data so that the flow phenomenon at the both top and bottom of the airfoil such as the flow separation and vortex shedding were observed. Also, smoke-wire experiment was carried out to visualize the surface flow pattern. After obtaining graphics from both force measurement experiment and hot-wire experiment compared with smoke wire experiment, it was noticed that there is a good coherence among the experiments. It was concluded that as Re number increased, the stall angle increased. And the separation bubble moved towards leading edge over the airfoil as the angle of attack increased.