Numerical investigation of plasma actuated and non-actuated Gurney flaps on aerodynamic characteristics of a plunging airfoil

Abstract

Two-dimensional laminar incompressible flow around a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 0012 plunging airfoil with different Gurney flap heights of 2% C, 5% C, and 7% C and the oscillation amplitude of h = 0.12 C and frequencies of ω = 1.3 and 4.67 rad/s at Re = 1850 is carried out in this paper. In addition to the Gurney flap, in order to control the flow over the airfoil, dielectric-barrier discharge plasma actuator is attached to the flap and its impact is investigated on the aerodynamic coefficients. Flow field and aerodynamic characteristics are compared with the clean plunging airfoil. For the Plasma force considered in this study, the 2% C Gurney flap height lead to a more enhancement in the lift curve. The results indicate that at all actuated and non-actuated Gurney flap heights the thrust is reduced. Furthermore, it is observed that by using plasma force at lower frequencies, $Δ C_{L}$ is proportional to the square root of the Gurney flap height while at higher frequencies, plasma actuation inverses this proportion. Also, it can be concluded that the proportionality factor increases with increasing the frequency for both lifts and drags coefficients.

Keywords

Airfoil gurney flap plasma plunging

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