Gust–Airfoil Coupling with a Loaded Airfoil

Anna M. Young, Amanda S. M. Smyth

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Abstract

The unsteady load response of an airfoil encountering a gust is often modeled using analytical transfer functions, which assume idealized behavior of both the flow and the airfoil. One such transfer function is the Sears function, which models a pure transverse gust interacting with a flat-plate airfoil at zero mean incidence. The function was extended by Goldstein and Atassi (“A Complete Second-Order Theory for the Unsteady Flow About an Airfoil due to a Periodic Gust,” Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Vol. 74, No. 4, 1976, pp. 741–765) to account for camber and incidence, as well as the presence of a streamwise gust component. Atassi (“The Sears Problem for a Lifting Airfoil Revisited-New Results,” Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Vol. 141, April 1984, pp. 109–122) showed that the effects of camber and incidence (that is, nonzero mean airfoil loading) are not negligible when there is a streamwise gust component. In this work, new experimental data are shown for an airfoil with nonzero loading encountering a gust with both streamwise and transverse components. As well as giving validation to the Atassi model, the flow physics behind the model is shown, including the superposition of the gust onto the airfoil potential field and the propagation of the gust along the airfoil surface.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)773-785
Number of pages13
JournalAIAA Journal
Volume59
Issue number3
Early online date30 Nov 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 Mar 2021

Funding

The experiments described in this paper were funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant EP/J010308/1. A. M. Young was funded by the Maudslay-Butler Research Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge and by EPSRC grant EP/L015943/1. A. S. M. Smyth was funded by an EPSRC Doctoral Training Grant at the University of Cambridge and by an EPSRC Doctoral Fellowship. The authors wish to thank the technical staff of the Whittle Laboratory for their assistance in manufacturing the gust generator and test section: in particular, David Barlow, Ian Thornton, and Elliot Read. The authors would also like to thank Ivor Day, Robert Miller, Carl Sequeira and Chris Freeman for the useful discussions during the course of this work.

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