A Comparative Study for Different Shapes of Airfoils

Abstract

Lift and drag forces on an airfoil blade or wing are known to depend mainly on the airfoil geometry in addition to the angle of attack. In this paper a comparative study of lift and drag characteristics and pressure distribution for airfoils of different geometries was carried out. Three different geometries, NACA0012, NACA2412, and SG6043 were investigated. A 2-D numerical analysis was performed using ANSYS 16. The k-ω shear stress transport (SST) model was used to simulate the effect of turbulence. The numerical simulation performed on the flow field around the three geometries considered here was applied at different angles of attack: -10, -5, 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25. Pressure distributions, and lift and drag coefficients were obtained for each angle. The numerical results obtained were validated via comparison of the predicated data with published results in the literature. From this comparison, showing good agreement, the use of the SG6043 airfoil in wind turbine applications is recommended, in view of its high (lift/drag) ratio. the results showed also the optimum values for lift to drag ratio for the different three profiles.