Numerical Study of Wind-Tunnel Wall Effects on Lift and Drag Characteristics of NACA 0012 Airfoil

Abstract

Possible interference effects of the wind tunnel walls play an important role especially for measurements in closed-wall test sections. In this study, a numerical analysis of two-dimensional subsonic flow over a NACA 0012 airfoil at different computational domain heights, angles of attack from 0^o to 10^o, and operating Reynolds number of 6×10⁶ is presented. The work highlights the role of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in the investigation of wind tunnel wall effect on lift curve slope correction factor (K_a). The flow solution is obtained using Ansys Fluent software by solving the steady-state continuity and momentum governing equations combined with turbulence model k-v  shear stress transport (SST-K?). The numerical results are validated by comparing with the available experimental measurements. Calculations show that the lift curve slope correction results are very close to the published data.