Aerodynamic Analysis of Flow over a Pitching Airfoil

This study aims to investigate the effect of pitching motion of a NACA 0012 airfoil on the lift and drag coefficients at different reduced frequencies for a flow over the airfoil at Reynolds number of 5x105. A two-dimensional computational analysis was performed for the airfoil at standard sea level conditions and reduced pitching frequencies of 0.1, 0.5 and 2.0 for the amplitudes of 20 degree and 30 degree with a mean incidence angle of zero degree. Besides, the effect of the flow velocity on the aerodynamic loads over the airfoil for the laminar, turbulent and transition regions is investigated. Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are used in the numerical study with fully structured quad lateral grid structure. k-ω SST transport turbulence model is adapted to capture turbulence effects. The numerical model is validated using the experimental results existing in the literature. The results show that there is a significant importance of reduced frequency of oscillation over the lift and drag hysteresis loop on graphics.