In recent years the flow field in the vicinity of moving airfoils capable of flexible elastic deformation has become a focus of attention, and its effects are beginning to be understood. Flow in the vicinity of an elastically deforming airfoil may be understood as a fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problem, and the motion and deformation of elastic airfoils, as well as the associated vortex flow phenomena in their vicinity, are complicated. Especially, the shape and hardness of the elastic regions of an airfoil may affect its rigidity and its bending characteristics and for this reason the influence of such airfoils on the flow fields around them require more detailed consideration. In this study, we fix the bending stiffness, which uniquely determines the nature of the elastic deformation of an elastic airfoil, and study the impact of changes in this quantity on the flow field, as well as the parameters that govern the fluid forces acting on the airfoil. In particular, our goal is to clarify the relationship between three key parameters, Strouhal number St, Reynolds number Re and bending stiffness K and is to elucidate the nature of the dynamic forces acting on an elastic airfoil as a function of these three dimensionless parameters. The bending stiffness K of the elastic airfoil is an important parameter that determines the bending characteristics and the moving boundary conditions at the wall surfaces in the fluid. By defining the new quantity St2/K, we showed that the characteristic of dynamic forces depends on the ratio St2/K.

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