International Journal of Engineering Research

Volume No.3, Issue No.3, pp : 154-158

ISSN:2319-6890)(online),2347-5013(print)
01 March 2014

CFD Analysis of an Aerofoil

Karna S. Patel, Saumil B. Patel, Utsav B. Patel, Prof. Ankit P. Ahuja
UVPCE, Ganpat University(www.uvpce.ac.in)

Abstract :In this report we have obtained the drag and lift
forces using CFD which can also be determined through
experiments using wind tunnel testing. In experimental
setup, the design model has to be placed in the test section.
This process is quite laborious & (surely) cost more than
CFD techniques cost for the same. Thus we have gone
through analytical method then it can be validated by
experimental testing. The analysis of the two dimensional
subsonic flow over a NACA 0012 airfoil at various angles of
attack and operating at a Reynolds number of 3E+06 is
presented. The CFD simulation results show close
agreement with those of the experiments, thus suggesting a
reliable alternative to experimental method in determining
drag and lift.
Keywords: Flow over airfoil; pressure coefficient; CFD
analysis; Angle of attack.

Introduction
It is a fact of common experience that a body in motion
through a fluid experience a resultant force which, in most
cases is mainly a resistance to the motion. A class of body
exists, However for which the component of the resultant
force normal to the direction to the motion is many time
greater than the component resisting the motion, and the
possibility of the flight of an airplane depends on the use of
the body of this class for wing structure [1]. Airfoil is such an
aerodynamic shape that when it moves through air, the air is
split and passes above and below the wing. The wings upper
surface is shaped so the air rushing over the top speeds up and
stretches out. This decreases the air pressure above the wing.
The air flowing below the wing moves in a comparatively
straighter line, so its speed and air pressure remain the same.
Since high air pressure always moves toward low air pressure,
the air below the wing pushes upward toward the air above the
wing. The wing is in the middle, and the whole wing is
lifted. The faster an airplane moves, the more lift there is.
And when the force of lift is greater than the force of gravity,
the airplane is able to fly.

Nomenclature of an airfoil
An airfoil is a body of such a shape that when it is placed in an
airstreams, it produces an aerodynamic force. This force is
used for different purposes such as the cross sections of wings,
propeller blades, windmill blades, compressor and turbine
blades in a jet engine, and hydrofoils are examples of airfoils.
The basic geometry of an airfoil is shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1: Basic nomenclature of an airfoil

The leading edge is the point at the front of the airfoil that has
maximum curvature. The trailing edge is defined similarly as
the point of maximum curvature at the rear of the airfoil.
The chord line is a straight line connecting the leading and
trailing edges of the airfoil. The chord length, or simply chord
is the length of the chord line and is the characteristic
dimension of the airfoil section.

Angle of Attack
If you stretch your arm out through the window of car that is
moving at a good speed, you can feel your arm pushed
backward. If you hold your arm straight with your hand
parallel to the road, and change the angle slightly, you can
suddenly feel that it is drown upwards. The hand and arm
work like the wing of an airplane and with the right angle (of
attack) you can feel a strong lift force [2].
AOA is the angle between the oncoming air or relative wind
and a reference line on the airplane or wing. Sometimes the
reference line is a line connecting the leading edge and trailing
edge at some average point on a wing. Most commercial jet
airplanes use the fuselage center line or longitudinal axis as
the reference line. It makes no difference what the difference
line is as long as it used as consistently. As the nose of the
wing turns up, AOA increases, and lift increases. Drag goes
up also, but not as quickly as lift. During take-off an airplane
builds up to a certain speed and then the pilot rotates the
plane that is, the pilot manipulates the controls so that the nose
of the plane comes up and, at some AOA, the wings generate
enough lift to take the plane into the air. Since an airplane
wing is fixed to the fuselage, the whole plane has to rotate to
increase the wing's angle of attack. Front wings on racecars
are fabricated so the angle of attack is easily adjustable to vary
the amount of down force needed to balance the car for the
driver.

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International Journal of Engineering Research

Volume No.3, Issue No.3, pp : 154-158

ISSN:2319-6890)(online),2347-5013(print)
01 March 2014

Relationship between angle of attack, coefficient

of drag and coefficient of lift

Figure 2: Angle of attack

Coefficient of Drag and Coefficient of Lift

The drag equation,

so co efficient of drag is given by the,

is essentially a statement that the drag force on any object is
proportional to the density of the fluid and proportional to the
square of the relative speed between the object and the fluid.
In fluid dynamics the cd is a dimensionless quantity that is
used to quantify the drag or resistance of an object in a fluid
environment such as air or water. It is used in the drag
equation where a lower drag coefficient indicates the object
will have less aerodynamic or drag.The drag coefficients
always associated with a particular surface area. The drag
coefficient of any object comprises the effects of the two basic
contributors to fluid dynamics drag: skin friction and from
drag. The drag coefficient of a lifting airfoil or hydrofoil also
includes the effects of lift induced drag. The drag coefficient
of a complete structure such as an aircraft also includes the
effects of interference drag. The overall drag coefficient
defined in the usual manner is The reference area depends on
what type of drag coefficient is being measured. For
automobiles and many other objects, the reference area is the
projected frontal area of the vehicle. This may not necessarily
be the cross sectional area of the vehicle, depending on where
the cross section is taken and for an airfoil the surface area is a
plane form area. The lift equation,

so coefficient of lift is given by the,

A fluid flowing past the surface of a body exerts a force on

it. Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to
the oncoming flow direction. It contrasts with the drag force,
which is the component of the surface force parallel to the
flow direction. If the fluid is air, the force is called
an aerodynamic force.

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Figure 3: Relationship of Different Coefficients

The lift coefficient of a fixed-wing aircraft varies with angle

of attack. Increasing angle of attack is associated with
increasing lift coefficient up to the maximum lift coefficient,
after which lift coefficient decreases.As the angle of attack of
a fixed-wing aircraft increases, separation of the airflow from
the upper surface of the wing becomes more pronounced,
leading to a reduction in the rate of increase of the lift
coefficient. The figure shows a typical curve for
a cambered straight wing. A symmetrical wing has zero lift at
0 degrees angle of attack. The lift curve is also influenced by
wing platform. A swept wing has a lower, flatter curve with a
higher critical angle.
Identically the value of drag coefficient is zero at the zero
AOA and it increase slowly till the stall condition and at the
time of stall as well as after stall it increase readily as shown
in figure 3. Particular airspeed, the airspeed at which the
aircraft stalls varies with the weight of the aircraft, the load
factor, the center of gravity of the aircraft and other factors.
However the aircraft always stalls at the same critical angle of
attack. The critical or stalling angle of attack is typically
around 15 for many airfoils.

Inputs and Boundary condition

The problem considers flow around the Aerospatiale a airfoil
at 0 and 6angles of AOA. For that we take some initial
inputs and boundary condition for our problem which are
shown in the table 1.
No
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Input
Velocity of flow
Operating temperature
Operating pressure
Model
Density of fluid
Kinematic viscosity
Reynolds number
Length
AOA

10

Fluid

Value
0.15 Mach or 51 m/s
300 k
101325 Pa.
Transition sst (4th equation)
1.225 Kg/m3
1.4607 E-5
3.5 E+6
1m
0 degree and 6 degree
respectively
Air as a ideal

Table 1: operating parameters

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International Journal of Engineering Research

Volume No.3, Issue No.3, pp : 154-158

CFD analysis process

No.

Steps

Process

Problem statement

Information about the ow

Mathematical
model

Generate 3D model

Mesh generation

Nodes/cells, time instants

Space
discretization

Coupled ODE/DAE systems

Time
discretization

Iterative solver

Discrete function values

CFD software

Implementation, debugging

Simulation run

Parameters, stopping criteria

Post processing

Visualization, analysis of data

10

Verification

Model validation / adjustment

11

Saving case and

data

Save all the obtain data

Comparing

Comparing the outcome values with real

practical values

12

ISSN:2319-6890)(online),2347-5013(print)
01 March 2014
For and angle of attack is zero degree we obtain that the
contours of static pressure over an aerofoil is symmetrical for
above and lower sections and the stagnation point is exactly at
the nose of an aerofoil. Hence there are no pressure different
created between two faces of aerofoil at zero degree of an
angle of attack.

Algebraic system Ax=b

Figure 5: Contours of static pressure over NACA 0012 airfoil at 0 degree

of AOA

Table 2: General procedure for CFD analysis

Mesh Generation
In order to analyze fluid flow, flow domains are split into
smaller sub domains. The governing equations are then
discretized and solved inside each of these sub domains. The
meshed area around the aerofoil is shown in below figure in
which meshing accuracy is increasing as we are go towards
the aerofoil.

Figure 6: Contours of static pressure over NACA 0012 airfoil at 6 degree

of AOA

Figure 4 : meshed region

Contours of Static pressure over NACA 0012

Airfoil
The static pressure of the air is simply the weight per unit area
of the air above the level under consideration. For instance,
the weight of the column of air with a cross-sectional area of 1
ft-square and extending upward from sea level through the
atmosphere is 2116 lb. The sea level static level is therefore
2116 psf. Static pressure is decrease as altitude is increased
because there is less air weight above. At 18,000 ft altitude the
static pressure is about half that at sea level [3]. The
amalgamation of static pressure and dynamic pressure is
known as total pressure.

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For an angle of attack of 6 degrees, we see that the flow has a

stagnation point just under the leading edge and hence
producing lift as there is a low pressure region on the upper
surface of the foil as shown in Figure 6. We can also observe
that Bernoullis principle is holding true; the velocity is high
(denoted by the red contours) at the low pressure region and
viceversa. There is a region of high pressure at the leading
edge (stagnation point) and region of low pressure on the
upper surface of airfoil.

Contours of Velocity magnitude over NACA

0012 airfoil
As shown in figure 7 and 8 at the 0 degree of AOA the
velocity contours are same as symmetrical and at 6 degree of
AOA the stagnation point is slightly shift towards the trailing
edge via bottom surface hence it will create low velocity
region at lower side of the airfoil and highervelocity

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International Journal of Engineering Research

Volume No.3, Issue No.3, pp : 154-158
acceleration region at the upper side of the airfoil and
according to principle of Bernoulli's upper surface will gain
low pressure and lower surface will gain higher pressure.
Hence value of coefficient of lift will increase and coefficient
of drag will also increase but the increasing in drag is low
compare to increasing in lift force.
In a symmetrical airfoil at no incidence, the distribution of
velocity and thus the pressures along both surfaces would have
been exactly the same, canceling each other to a resulting total
lift force of zero

ISSN:2319-6890)(online),2347-5013(print)
01 March 2014

Resultant values and graphs

Graphs of coefficient of drag and coefficient of lift at AOA
zero and six respectively verses number of iterations is shown

below.
Figure 9: Graph of coefficient of drag at six degree of AOA.

Figure 7: Contours of velocity magnitude over NACA 0012 airfoil at 0

degree of AOA

Figure 10: Graph of coefficient of drag at zero degree AOA.

Figure 8: contours of velocity magnitude over NACA 0012 airfoil at 6

degree of AOA

Variables
Drag force
Lift force
Drag coefficient
Lift coefficient

0 degree of AOA
21.79 N
0.2487 N
0.01373
0.00015

6 degree of AOA
40.0502 N
888.7298 N
0.02566
0.56947

Table 3: Conclusion Table

Conclusion
Based on the CFD analysis of the flow over NACA 0012 air
foil we can conclude that at the zero degree of AOA there is
no lift force generated and if we want to increase amount of
lift force and value of lift coefficientthen we have to increase
the value of AOA. By doing that obviously amount of drag
force and value of drag coefficient also increased but the
amount of increment in drag force and drag coefficient is quite
lowercompare to lift force. The exact numerical values of the
forces and coefficient is given as below.

Figure 11: Graph of coefficient of Lift at six degree of AOA

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International Journal of Engineering Research

Volume No.3, Issue No.3, pp : 154-158

ISSN:2319-6890)(online),2347-5013(print)
01 March 2014

References

Figure 12:
Graph of coefficient of Lift at zero degree AOA.

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[1] The Element Of Aerofoil and Airscrew theory

By H. Glauert
[2] Developing Wind PowerProjects : Theory and Practice
By Tore Wizelius
[3] Flight Theory And Aerodynamics : A Practical guide for
Operational safety
By Charles E. Dole, James E. Lewis
[4]G.V.Parkinson and G.D.watt
Some new applications of linearized airfoil
theory (1983)
[5] Ghias, R., Mittal, R., and Lund, T.,
A Non-Body Conformal Grid Method for
Simulation of Compressible Flows with
Complex Immersed Boundaries, AIAA
Paper 2004-0080, 2004
[6] Alex Sullivan Cleveland, F. A.,
Aerodynamic forces acting on an airfoil

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