CFD Analysis on the Effect of Circular Cavity at Different Location of Airfoil Surface

The paper present numerical effects of supercritical airfoil SC (2) 0414 having circular cavities at three different chord wise locations from leading to trailing edge. Here passive control method is widely applied by altering the \baseline airfoil surface coordinates to ascertain the aerodynamic behavior of the cavity at 40 %, 50 % and 60 % of the chord length respectively. The cavity shapes were deformed using Bezier curve to observe vortex pattern in the cavity region. Structured meshing was employed. The analysis was performed on SC 2 (0) 414 two-dimensional airfoil using commercial CFD ANSYS Fluent software where Spalart- Allmaras turbulence model technique is chosen to solve boundary layer problems on adverse pressure gradient and tested at extended range of angle of attack (-150 to 150) at Mach number 0.85. The study highlights the aerodynamic characteristics of lifting coefficient, drag coefficient and lift to drag ratio. It was observed that the cavity in suction surface stabilizes the vortex with adequate pressure distribution and shows rise in lift coefficient. The preliminary findings for cavity at 50 % of the chord length delays stall effect and denotes remarkable aerodynamic characteristics. Whereas airfoil with cavity at 40 % of the leading edge also shows less parallel performance than trailing edge cavity airfoil. It concludes in high subsonic speed, the SC (2) 0414 airfoil with 50 % circular cavity profile is the most feasible as it showed a good aerodynamic performance than other airfoils at maximum inclination.