A comparison of experimental and computational analyses of two dimensional foil sections

Abstract

Performance of two dimensional foil sections with traditional, blunt and cupped trailing edge geometries are experimentally and computationally evaluated. Traditional foils show less than 1% error in lift slope and less than 0.1 degree error in predicted angle of attack. Foils which include trailing edge separation due to a trailing edge cup show up to 30% error in lift slope and 1.0 degree error in predicted angle of attack. Foils which include trailing edge separation due to bluntness show good correlation in lift slope (2% error) but still show up to 0.9 degree error in predicted angle of attack. Experimental and numerical evaluations are conducted in order to assess whether the differences are caused by the experimental or computational fluid dynamics. All known experimental uncertainties are exhausted without explaining the differences between predicted and measured lift