Aziz, Mohd Sharizal Abdul
(2012)
Numerical And Experimental Investigation Of 2D Membrane Airfoil Performance.
Masters thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
The characteristic feature of a mammalian flight is the use of thin compliant
wings as the lifting surface. This unique feature of flexible membrane wings found in
flying mammals such as bats and flying squirrel was studied in order to explore its
possibility as flexible membrane wings in aerodynamics performance study. The
unsteady aspects of the fluid-structure interaction of membrane wings are very
complicated and therefore did not receive much attention compared to the rigid wing.
Motivated by this, a membrane airfoil consisting of latex sheet mounted on a NACA
643-218 airfoil frame was developed to study effect of membrane flexibility on
laminar separation bubble (LSB), effects of membrane thickness, Reynolds number
(Re), and membrane rigidity on the aerodynamic performance (lift and drag), meant
for low Re applications. Unsteady, two dimensional (2D) simulations were also
carried out on rigid and membrane airfoils with the air flow modeled as Laminar and
the turbulent cases being modeled using Spalart-Allmaras viscous model. FLUENT
6.3 was employed to study the fluid flow behavior, whereas ABAQUS 6.8-1 was
utilized as structural solver, both of which were coupled in real time using the
MpCCI 3.1 software. It has been established that, the LSB is greatly influenced by
the membrane flexibility, and the membrane airfoil has superior flow separation
characteristics over rigid one.
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