Computational study of airfoil performance with the incorporation of a moving surface at the leading edge

Improving the aerodynamic performance of wing has always been an interesting topic of research to the aerodynamicists. Keeping this into consideration, various researchers have attempted to improve the aerodynamic performance of wing in various ways. Some of them are suction, blowing, vortex generators, turbulence promoters etc. A vast of literature have been accumulated over the years. Compared to them, the use of moving surface on the improvement of airfoil performance has drawn little attention. This concept employs rotating cylinder at various locations of airfoil. This research aims to investigate the variation in airfoil performance as a result of incorporating leading edge rotating cylinder. For this, a symmetric airfoil was chosen and its performance parameters were investigated. Later on, the same airfoil performance has been investigated with incorporation of a leading edge rotating cylinder. In addition, the effect of clearance between airfoil and cylinder also monitored to predict the performance. Finally, a comparative performance analysis was conducted to reveal the variation of airfoil performance under the influence of momentum injection. This study revealed that the incorporation of moving surface causes performance gain in both maximum lift coefficient as well as stall angle.