Experimental determination of the influence of turbulent scale on the lift and drag coefficients of low Reynolds number airfoils

Abstract

Boundary layer wind tunnel experiments have been conducted in order to expose aspects of a turbulence scale dependent behaviour of two low Reynolds number airfoils: - Selig 4083 and Selig-Donovan 7037. The airfoils were submitted to two different turbulent flows with the same mean velocity but different turbulence structures. In one of the flows large eddies prevail while the other flow was primarily shaped by small scale eddies. Lift and drag coefficients were calculated and plotted. These values were contrasted with laminar flow wind tunnel data obtained from previous experiments made at the University of Illinois, at Urbana Champaign, by the Experimental Aerodynamic Group led by Michael Selig.