The effect of airfoil to aerodynamics characteristics of flapping wing by numerical simulation on Navier-Stokes equations

Firstly this paper presents a numerical method to study the 3D flapping wing. The numerical method is solving preconditioned Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations based on chimera grid method coupled with Baldwin-Lomax turbulent model. Then, it focuses on the effect of airfoil to the aerodynamics characteristics of flapping wing. Keeping the same wing shape and state parameters, the different thickness and camber of airfoils are simulated respectively. Study shows that the thickness has little effect on the lift force but increasing thickness can decrease the drag force for the leading edge suction. Certain camber of airfoil can improve the aerodynamics characteristics of flapping wing, increasing the lift force or decreasing the drag force. But too big camber will make bad effect. The results of this paper are useful to the airfoil design of flapping wing.