High streamwise airfoil oscillations at constant low and high incidence angles

Ratios of streamwise airfoil oscillations to the freestream velocity above 30% have not been well investigated in the literature for a reduced frequency range relevant to unsteady applications. A known departure from the experimental correlation to analytical theory for lower magnitudes of this ratio, known as surge amplitude, motivates a parameter study for constant freestream, at constant low- and high-incidence angles, to understand the circulatory lift dependence on angle of attack, Reynolds number, surge amplitude, and reduced frequency in comparison with theory and higher-order computations. To better understand the increased deviation between theory and experiment with increasing velocity fluctuation, a detailed study of surge amplitude of 0.5 is investigated. The experiment for comparison was a free-surface water tunnel with a NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) 0018 airfoil oscillated in the streamwise direction. Force measurements, normalized by instantaneous dynamic pressure, reveal that unsteady lift is dependent on Reynolds number and reduced frequency in both attached and fully separated conditions. In separated conditions, mean and fluctuating lift show a dependency on reduced frequency for larger velocity fluctuations than a relative surge amplitude of 10%. Two-dimensional computations were found to agree well with experimental data for Reynolds number 75 k, low incidence cases, and for high incidence with reduced frequencies less than 0.15, where a fully separated upper surface boundary layer condition occurred. Agreement between computations and experiments was not favorable for reduced frequencies above 0.15 for high incidence cases, where partial upper surface boundary layer reattachment is predicted.