Experimental and numerical analysis of aerodynamic effects of repair patches on damaged airfoils

This investigation assesses the change of aerodynamic characteristics of triangular and star-shaped damaged airfoils with repair patches. Both experimental and numerical methods to determine aerodynamic coefficients are used in this study. The test model is a NACA 64 1 -412 airfoil full span, which is considered by using five schematics: Clean model, damaged model, upper repaired model, lower repaired model, and fully repaired model. Repair patches are chosen based on the Aircraft battle damage repair (ABDR) manuals. Various effects of repair schemes on triangular and star-shaped damages are quantitatively and qualitatively illustrated. A novel visualization method by paint and oil is used in wind tunnel tests to study the effects of repair patches on the damaged airfoil.