Effects of Leading-Edge Blowing Control and Reduced Frequency on Airfoil Aerodynamic Performances

Airfoil leading-edge fluid-blowing control is computationally studied to improve aerodynamic efficiency. The fluid injection momentum coefficient Cl (the ratio of injection to incoming square velocities times the slot’s width to airfoil’s half chord length) varies from 0.5% to 5.4%. Both static and dynamic conditions are investigated for a NACA0018 airfoil at low speed and Reynolds number of 250 k based on the airfoil’s chord length. The airfoil is dynamically pitched at a reduced frequency (the pitching tangential speed to the freestream speed ratio), varying between 0.0078 and 0.2. Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) and unsteady RANS (URANS) is used in the simulations as based on the Transition SST and Spalart–Allmaras models, generally achieving good agreement with experimental results in lift and drag coefficients and in the pressure coefficient distributions along the airfoil. It is found that oscillating the airfoil can delay stall, as expected, in dynamic stall (DS). Leading-edge blowing control can also significantly delay stall both in static and dynamic conditions as long as sufficient momentum is applied to the control. On the other hand, for a small Cl such as 0.5%, the leading-edge control worsens the performance and hastens the appearance of stall in both static and dynamic conditions. The airfoil’s oscillation reduces the differences between pitch-up and pitch-down aerodynamic performances. Detailed analysis of vorticity, pressure, velocity, and streamline contours is given to provide plausible explanations and insight to the flow.