Investigation on Aerodynamics Performance of Elliptic Airfoil at Low Speed

By calculating and comparing the aerodynamic performance of elliptic airfoils with different thickness-chord ratio using numerical calculation method,the 16% thickness elliptic airfoil is selected to be the experimental airfoil,and the experimental investigation on this airfoil is performed in two-dimensional testing section of NF-3 wind tunnel at Northwestern Polytechnical University.The techniques of measuring the surface pressure and drag measurement with trail total pressure row tube are used.The compare between experimental result and computation shows that,both of them approaching well at higher speed and Reynolds number,but the experimental results are quite different from the computation at lower speed and Reynolds number.It is apparent that the elliptic airfoil has quite different aerodynamic performance from conventional airfoils.