Lift and Drag Comparison of Flat Airfoil vs. Whale Inspired Airfoil for Wind Turbine Applications

Published in: Engineering Innovations for Global Sustainability: Proceedings of the 14th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology
Date of Conference: July 20-22, 2016
Location of Conference: San Jose, Costa Rica
Authors: José A. Montoya Segnini
Gerardo Carbajal
Refereed Paper: #184

Abstract:

Nature inspired engineering application is the focus of the present study. The lift and drag coefficient of a whale inspired airfoil is numerically evaluated and compared with an asymmetric airfoil. A three dimensional numerical simulation of an airfoil inspired by whales’ fins was developed to better understand the aerodynamic effect it creates on the lift and drag respectively. The asymmetric airfoil selected was the NACA 63(4)-421. To simplify the complex geometry of the whale fin, and to have an easier way to model, it was placed spheres as form of tubercles along the leading-edge side. The airfoils were built on the dimensions of 3.8 meters of chord and 10 meters of spam, commercial computational solver was use for the numerical simulation. The airfoils performance was analyzed at different angle of attacks, ranging from 0 degrees to 20 degrees with a constant Reynolds Number of 3.8 x 106. Different sphere diameters were used in this study to see the effect of these tubercles on the aerodynamic of the airfoil. According to the numerical results it was found a slightly improvement of the lift coefficient by augmenting the sphere size; however a bigger sphere size cause an earlier stall. The drag coefficient is slightly reduced too. The lift-drag ratio had increased up to a 2% which could cause a high impact for different applications.