Study of mesh quality improvement for CFD analysis of an airfoil

Abstract

Airfoils generate lift in engineering applications such as for airplanes, wind turbines, automotive spoilers, etc. For accurate CFD analysis of airfoils, the quality of the mesh is of paramount importance, especially when dealing with turbulent flows commonly encountered in real life applications. Currently there are different tools that are available to improve the quality of the mesh required for CFD studies. This paper describes a study to assess the significant of the quality of the mesh on CFD analyses of NACA 23012 airfoil by using selected open source tools. The turbulence is modeled using the well-known k-ω Shear Stress Transport model. For validation, results have been compared with experimental datasets which were obtained from "TAG Stuttgart #1" tunnel. © 2018, International Islamic University Malaysia-IIUM. Airfoils generate lift in engineering applications such as for airplanes, wind turbines, automotive spoilers, etc. For accurate CFD analysis of airfoils, the quality of the mesh is of paramount importance, especially when dealing with turbulent flows commonly encountered in real life applications. Currently there are different tools that are available to improve the quality of the mesh required for CFD studies. This paper describes a study to assess the significant of the quality of the mesh on CFD analyses of NACA 23012 airfoil by using selected open source tools. The turbulence is modeled using the well-known k-ω Shear Stress Transport model. For validation, results have been compared with experimental datasets which were obtained from "TAG Stuttgart #1" tunnel.