Study on Aerodynamic Characteristics of Curved Trailing Edge Wing of NACA 4412 Aerofoil

The primary purpose of a wing in an aircraft is to produce an uplift force which could make the aircraft to take off in the air. Aerofoil which is also the special wing cross section produced the lift force. NACA 4412 aerofoil planform was used in this paper or investigation as it was said to have a good stall properties and a low roughness effect as well. The aerodynamic characteristics of an aerofoil play a vital role in order to produce an aircraft. Thus, there are a few models of different wing planform design were investigated to explore the aerodynamic characteristics. All of the wing models were prepared by maintaining the surface area changing only the wing aspect ratio. However, the wing with rectangular shape (model A) was considered as the reference model in order to compare with the others models (model B & C) which have the curvature at the trailing edge of an aerofoil. Next, all of the wing models were examined at the airspeed of 133 m/s (Reynolds number of 1.15 x 106) in commercial Computational Fluid Dynamic software (CFD). The aerodynamic characteristics such as the lift and drag force as well as the pressure distribution were determined using the CFD software at various angles of attack. After the data were being analyzed and studied, the expected result will show that the wing planform with curve trailing edge with higher aspect ratio has a higher lift coefficient and a lower drag coefficient as well as higher lift to drag ratio compared to other wing models. This is because a high aspect ratio will produce less air disturbance at the tip of the long and thin wing. In other word, it produced lesser induced drag compared to the wing with low aspect ratio which is fat and short in size. However, the results will be verified and will be further discuss in the future.