Investigation the Aerodynamic Performance of NACA 4412 Airfoil at oscillating inlet condition

Nowadays, as the wind turbines become widespread, it is important to study the turbine behavior in real conditions which may be oscillatory or unsteady. Identifying the characteristics of airfoils used in HAWT blades in different operating conditions can predict the turbine’s aerodynamic performance with acceptable accuracy. In this research, NACA 4412 airfoil has been studied and its performance characteristics such as lift coefficients drag coefficient, surface pressure distributions in subsonic flow field at different angles of attack and Reynolds numbers have been investigated. For this purpose, RANS & URANS governing equations are employed for analysis of static & oscillating conditions respectively using two different turbulence models (Spallart- Almaras and "K-ω" ) have been used. Numerical solution results show acceptable agreement with experimental results. Furthermore, the aerodynamic characteristics with oscillating flow field and the effect of Reynolds number and reduced domain variation has been investigated. The results show that as the value of the reduced domain parameter increases, the lift coefficient increases, but drag coefficient, especially at low angles of attack, does not change significantly.