The separation happens either at leading edge or trailing edge. In this range of Re, the adverse pressure gradient plays a destructive role in aerodynamic performance and consequently causes flow separation over the airfoil. The motivation of recent attempts is to improve the aerodynamic performance in Low Reynolds Number (LRN) flows. Thermal camber Aerodynamic CFD Low Reynolds numberĭue to the importance of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV), many studies have been done to develop this field of research. Also, when this method is applied to the NACA2412 and NACA4412 airfoils, lift to drag coefficient ratio will increase more than the condition with only cooling or heating the surfaces. These improvements are more than the airfoils with physical camber. After validation, results indicated that cooling upper surface and heating lower surface, namely thermal camber, generate lift force and improve aerodynamic performance for symmetric airfoils at a 0° Angle of Attack ( AOA). Furthermore, various temperatures are tested in order to find the optimum condition. Hence, a symmetric airfoil, like NACA0012, with thermal camber is compared with the airfoils with the physical camber, including NACA2412 and NACA4412, to specify which camber type has more effects on the aerodynamic efficiency. This phenomenon is used to improve the aerodynamic performance.
![symmetric airfoil symmetric airfoil](https://asa.scitation.org/action/showOpenGraphArticleImage?doi=10.1121/1.4818769&id=images/medium/1.4818769.figures.f5.gif)
The main objective of this paper is the introduction of the thermal camber phenomenon. Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations are discretized by Finite Volume Method (FVM) and are solved by the SIMPLE algorithm in an open source software, namely OpenFOAM.
![symmetric airfoil symmetric airfoil](https://s3.studylib.net/store/data/005869505_1-61867dd7aaf8ba68e95139d3feecdf17.png)
In this research, viscous, laminar and steady flow around symmetric and non-symmetric airfoils is simulated at Low Reynolds Number (LRN).