Abstract
Steady numerical simulations of an optimized airfoil [1, 2] with different-sized end plates have been performed to identify the effect of chord-shaped end plates with different widths on its lift and drag forces. The freestream mean velocity was 10 m/sec. and the Reynolds number based on the airfoil chord length was approximately 2.0 × 105. The new end plates have a width of 1.27, 7.62, or 12.7 cm. The results of the airfoil without the end plates have shown increased lift with increasing the angle of attack (AOA) with a peak lift coefficient of 1.9 and the lift-to-drag ratio was 2.8 at 20 degrees AOA. The addition of the end plates respectively increases and decreases the lift and drag forces with 12.7 cm width end-plates being the most impactful, resulting in a nearly 9.1% increase and over 30% decrease in the lift and drag forces respectively as compared with the corresponding results for the baseline model. For the 1.27 cm width end-plates, the average increase and decrease in respectively lift and drag forces were 5.7% and less than 1% and when the 7.62 cm width end-plates were used these values were 8.2% and over 24%. For all models, there were no significant increases in lift force beyond 40 degrees AOA.
