CFD Analysis of a 2D Airfoil

Although this was a relatively simple and straightforward project, it is what piqued my interest in aerodynamics, particularly CFD. It is now something I am exploring on my own time, and hope to be able to incorporate into my career.

Since we had not been exposed to CFD analysis before, we were walked through the majority of setting up the runs. The selection of which airfoil we were to analyze and the analysis itself was all individual. I chose the NACA 2412 airfoil since I had previously worked with that airfoil earlier in the semester.

The first step was generating the mesh for the analysis using Pointwise. The mesh was a Smooth O-Grid with a sharp trailing edge and 100 points over both the upper and lower surfaces. The spacing was 0.01 at the leading and trailing edges. The meshing parameters and the resultant mesh were as follows:

The following were the physics models and boundary conditions that I chose to carry out the analysis using ANSYS Fluent.

The results from the analyses are presented below including the salient features for the flow.

Those results were then compared to the results of an analysis performed using XFOIL. The data for both analyses for the most part lines up, signifying agreeance between the different analyses. It was therefore concluded that the results are accurate.