Simulação computacional de um perfil aerodinãmico em escoamentos de baixo número de reynolds utilizando métodos numéricos distintos

Abstract

Aerodynamics is the branch of physics that studies the phenomena that accompany all relative movement between a body and the air that surrounds it, determining the relationship between the shape and the dynamic balance of this body on the action of this relative movement. Knowing this, one of the processes of great importance for the aeronautical project destined to the SAE AeroDesign competition is the aerodynamic analysis of the aerodynamic profile, which directly influences the overall aerodynamics of the aircraft. The present study seeks to analyze the aerodynamic coefficients of the NACA 4415 profile through computational fluid mechanics in low Reynolds number flows through two numerical methodologies by two different softwares and compare the results in relation to wind tunnel data from a literature . One of the programs used was ANSYS Fluent®, which is based on the Finite Volume Method (MVF) and the other program used was XFLR5®, which is based on the Panel Method. The aerodynamic coefficients and the aerodynamic efficiency of the NACA 4415 airfoil at different angles of attack and the pressure distributions along the aerodynamic profile were obtained and analyzed for viscous incompressible flows of low Reynolds number with a value equal to 470,000 where a good approximation was verified from the results to data from the literature. In addition, an analysis of the effect of the number of panels and an analysis of the effect of the number of mesh elements were carried out, both to verify the behavior of the aerodynamic coefficients, where it was verified that by the methodology of this work, 300 panels and 200,000 mesh elements enough values were shown.