JOURNAL OF AIRCRAFT

Vol. 44, No. 5, September–October 2007

Analysis of Wind Tunnel Wall Interference Effects

on Subsonic Unsteady Airfoil Flows

Karthikeyan Duraisamy∗
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
William J. McCroskey
U.S. Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate, NASA Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field, California 94035
and
James D. Baeder
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
DOI: 10.2514/1.28143
In this work, the effect of wall interference on steady and oscillating airfoils in a subsonic wind tunnel is studied. A
variety of approaches including linear theory, compressible inviscid and viscous computations, and experimental
data are considered. Integral transform solutions of the linearized potential equations show an augmentation of the
lift magnitude for steady flows when the wall is close to the airfoil surface. For oscillating airfoils, lift augmentation is
accompanied by a significant change in the phase of the lift response. Idealized compressible Euler calculations are
seen to corroborate the linear theory under conditions that are sufficiently away from acoustic resonance. Further,
the theory compares well with compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes calculations and experimental
measurements over a wide range of attached flows at subsonic Mach numbers. The present methodology can thus be
used to predict wall interference effects and also to help extrapolate linear and nonlinear (dynamic stall) wind tunnel
data to free-air conditions.

Nomenclature dynamics (CFD) simulations of wind tunnel experiments (for

c = chord length instance, [3,4]) are performed without modeling the tunnel wall.
H = wall distance (in terms of semichord) In a steady attached flow around an airfoil, the primary effect of the
h=c = wall distance (in terms of c) wind tunnel wall is to present an effective blockage, thus resulting in
k = reduced frequency, 2U!c an augmentation of lift. However, unsteady compressible flow (such
M = freestream Mach number as that corresponding to an oscillating airfoil) can be expected to be
U = freestream velocity more complicated because of the fact that acoustic disturbances
w
x = downwash distribution (normalized by U) propagating from the airfoil surface reflect off the tunnel walls, and
x = chordwise distance the resulting interaction can significantly affect the magnitude and

= angle of attack, deg phasing of the aerodynamic forces. For instance, Runyan and
p















Watkins [5] demonstrate the possibility of succeeding disturbances
 = Prandtl–Glauert factor, 1  M2

p
 = pressure difference between top and bottom reinforcing each other, causing an acoustic resonance. For a given
(normalized by freestream dynamic pressure) tunnel height, this phenomenon occurs at a particular frequency of
 = nondimensional distance along camber line oscillation that is finite for all subsonic Mach numbers. Wind tunnel
 = phase angle between driving frequency and lift tests [6] showed a sharp reduction in the lift magnitude near the
response predicted frequency.
! = angular velocity of pitching The broad objective of the present work is to characterize and
predict the effect of wind tunnel wall interference on steady and
oscillating airfoils. The following are the specific goals: 1) extensive
study of the effects of wind tunnel interference on the lift response on
an oscillating airfoil using linear theory, 2) assessment of the
Introduction accuracy and validity of linear theory, 3) assessment of Euler and
Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) solvers in representing
T YPICALLY, high Reynolds number experiments (of the order
of 106 [1,2]) on airfoils are conducted in wind tunnel test
sections that are not significantly larger than the model size. The
interference effects, and 4) investigation of the flowfield using Euler
and RANS simulations.
proximity of the test section walls to the airfoil surface can be
expected to affect the flowfield in a way that the measured forces
cannot be directly extrapolated to free-flight conditions. Even though
this is a relatively well-known fact, most computational fluid Linear Theory
The problem of prediciting unsteady airloads on a thin airfoil has
Presented as Paper 2993 at the 24th AIAA Applied Aerodynamics been investigated by a number of researchers over the past century.
Conference, San Francisco, 5–8 June 2006; received 8 October 2006; revision For the specific case of oscillating airfoils, major contributions were
received 5 January 2007; accepted for publication 9 January 2007. Copyright made by Theodorsen [7] and Possio [8]. Theodorsen derived an
© 2007 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All
explicit expression for the force and moment on an oscillating flat
rights reserved. Copies of this paper may be made for personal or internal use,
on condition that the copier pay the $10.00 per-copy fee to the Copyright
plate in incompressible flow and expressed it in terms of Bessel
Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923; include functions. Possio obtained an integral equation relating the
the code 0021-8669/07 $10.00 in correspondence with the CCC. downwash and pressure distribution for subsonic compressible flow,
∗
Currently Department of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, which required a numerical solution. Whereas both of these
G12 8QQ Scotland, United Kingdom. approaches are valid for flow in an infinite domain, Bland’s [9] work
1683
1684 DURAISAMY, MCCROSKEY, AND BAEDER

M=0 oscillating case) is given by

6.7
M=0.1  
6.65 M=0.2 d
M=0.3 w
x; t  w
xei!t   ik y
xei!t (2)
6.6 dx

6.55 It has to be mentioned that the preceding formulation reduces to well-

6.5 known forms such as the Prandtl–Glauert solution for steady
β CL α

subsonic compressible flow and Theodorsen’s theory for unsteady

6.45 incompressible flow [7] under relevant simplifying assumptions.
6.4
Rather surprisingly, this theory appears to have received relatively
scant attention in the literature.
6.35 Figure 1 shows the effect of wall proximity on the lift curve slope
of a flat plate in subsonic flow. It becomes clear that for wall heights
6.3
<3c, significant lift augmentation can be expected. It is confirmed
6.25 that for large h=c, the results asymptote to Glauert’s result,
CL
 2=. Other than the Glauert correction, a weak dependence
2 4 6 8 10 on Mach number is observed, except at very small h=c.
h/c Figure 2 shows the amplitude jCL
j and phase angle  of the lift
Fig. 1 Linear theory: Mach number corrected lift curve slope for response for a flat plate oscillating (about the quarter-chord point and
steady flow over flat plate with varying Mach number and tunnel height.
in incompressible flow) at different frequencies. As a measure of
consistency, the results were verified to accurately compare with
appears to be the first to account for the presence of wind tunnel walls Theodorsen’s theory for h=c  1. In addition, the distance of the
in subsonic compressible flow. wind tunnel walls from the airfoil surface is also varied. If the airfoil
Based on an integral transform solution of the linearized full motion can be represented by

1 cos
!t, the lift response is
potential equation, this theory can be used to compute the surface given by CL
t 
1 jCL
j cos
  !t. It is evident that while lift
pressure distribution
p (and hence the forces), once the motion- augmentation occurs when the wall gets closer to the flat plate for a
induced downwash w on the airfoil is known. The solution involves a given frequency, the magnitude of the lift is reduced for increasing
Fredholm integral equation of the first kind, given by frequencies. In addition to the lift augmentation, the presence of the
Z1 wall is seen to significantly determine the phasing. For instance, at
k  0:175, the presence of the wall for 1:25 < h=c < 4 suggests a
w
x  K
x  
p
 d (1) phase lag, whereas the freestream value corresponds to a clear phase
1
lead. In general, the phase angle lags the forcing for small reduced
where the kernel function is given by frequencies and then leads for larger reduced frequencies, but this
trend is delayed as the distance to the wind tunnel wall is smaller. It is
 ik 1  sgn
x 2 ikx also seen that the effect of the wind tunnel wall on the deviation of the
K
x   log jxj  ke
4x 4 8 phase angle (from free-air conditions) is larger for increasing
frequencies.
     2 
1 jxj ikH jxj ikM x 1 x
 sgn
xF0  F e 2  csch As expected, Fig. 3 confirms the fact that compressible flow is
4H H  H 8H 2H
    much more complicated. As mentioned earlier, for particular
2H ikM2 x x ik 1 x combinations of the reduced frequency and wall distances, acoustic
 
e 2  1csch  log tanh
x 2H 4 x 4H resonance between the oscillating (or driving frequency) and the
ik

ikM2 x jxj
 waves reflected off the wind tunnel wall drastically alters the lift

e 2  1 log tanh response. At such conditions, linear theory predicts infinite
4 4H amplification. These downwash independent modes will be termed
Runyan modes [5] and are related by
where F and F0 are functions (the latter being the derivative of the
former) that can be summed up as an asymptotic series. The solution  
of this equation is obtained by collocation using a polynomial basis.  1
kn  n ; n  0; 1; 2 . . . (3)
The convergence properties and implementation details can be found MH 2
in [10]. The method is very efficient in that only 6–10 collocation
points are required to achieve convergence. Wind tunnel tests [6] confirm the existence of this phenomenon;
If the camber line (including the angle of attack) can be however, damping in the form of nonlinearities and viscous effects
represented by the function y
x, then the downwash function (in an diminish the exaggerated effect predicted by linear theory.

9
10
k=0.25
8 8

Increasing k 6
7
Phase angle (degrees)

4 k=0.2

6 2 k=0.175
|
Lα

0 k=0.0
|C

5
−2 k=0.15
k=0.125
k=0.1
4 −4 k=0.05

−6
3
−8

2 1
−10 1
10 10
h/c h/c
a) Amplitude of lift curve slope b) Phase angle of lift response
Fig. 2 Linear theory: lift slope and phase response for oscillating flat plate at M
0 (incompressible flow).
 DURAISAMY, MCCROSKEY, AND BAEDER 1685

9
10

8 8

Increasing k 6
k=0.25
7

Phase angle (degrees)

4

6 2
k=0.2

|CL α|
0 k=0.0
5 k=0.175
−2 k=0.15

4 −4 k=0.125
k=0.1
k=0.05
−6
3
−8

2 1
−10 1
10 10
h/c h/c
a) Amplitude of lift curve slope b) Phase angle of lift response
Fig. 3 Linear theory: lift slope and phase response for oscillating flat plate at M
0:3 (subsonic compressible flow).

Numerical (CFD) Results Figure 5 summarizes steady inviscid computations of the flow
Computations are performed using a structured overset mesh over a NACA 0003 airfoil. For each combination of M and h=c, the
solver. The compressible inviscid or RANS equations are solved lift was computed for an angle of attack
 1 deg (and multiplied
using a high-order finite volume approach [11]. The inviscid terms by 180=) to obtain the lift curve slope. For selected cases, an angle
are computed using the fifth-order weighted essentially non- of attack sweep (from 5 
 5 deg) was performed to confirm
oscillatory (WENO) [12] scheme with Roe’s flux difference splitting the linearity of the lift curve.
[13]. The viscous terms are computed using fourth-order central Figure 6 compares the computed lift response, for a sample
differencing. Time integration is performed using the implicit oscillating NACA 0003 airfoil case, with linear theory. The angle of
second-order backwards difference scheme. The Spalart–Allmaras attack for these cases is given by
 1 sin
!t. The differences
turbulence model [14] is used as a RANS closure when viscous between the linear theory and CFD is observed to be within plotting
results are sought. For the unsteady cases, dual time stepping is used accuracy. Figure 7 and Table 1 summarize the unsteady cases by
with an appropriate number of subiterations to achieve 2–3 orders of comparing the magnitude and phasing of the first harmonic of the
magnitude of the L2 norm of the mean flow and turbulence model resultant lift curve slope.
residuals. Typically, the attached flow cases required around 500 In these cases, aside from the linearity assumptions in the theory,
time steps per cycle for time converged results (to within plotting some differences can be expected from the geometric variations.
accuracy) and the dynamic stall calculation required around 1000
time steps per cycle. The dual time stepping is performed at a
constant pseudo-Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) number of 10 for
the flow solver as well as the turbulence model.
A two-mesh system (as shown in Fig. 4) is used to discretize the
flow domain. A body fitted C-mesh is used near the airfoil surface
and this grid is overset inside a rectangular mesh that extends to the
wind tunnel walls and the inflow and outflow boundaries. The airfoil
mesh moves as a rigid body inside the static background mesh, thus
ensuring a good mesh quality at all simulation times. The
background mesh is hole-cut to blank out an extended region that
encloses the airfoil surface. Subsonic characteristic inflow and
outflow boundary conditions are specified at the left and right
boundaries of the background mesh. On the wall surfaces (in both the
background and airfoil meshes), density is extrapolated from the
interior of the domain and the pressure is obtained from the normal
momentum equation.
All the results presented in this work were verified to be grid- and
time-step-converged. The grid-converged inviscid calculations are
performed on a 201  61 (in the wraparound and normal directions,
respectively) airfoil mesh, whereas the viscous calculations use a
317  121 mesh. The background mesh is made such that square
cells of side 0:025c are used in the vicinity of the airfoil mesh. This
yields 40 cells per chord length. Therefore, wavelengths of the order
of 0:3c can be resolved satisfactorily by the numerical scheme. Note
that the use of 500 time steps per cycle ensures that the time step is
small enough to accurately represent the propagation of these waves.
A typical background mesh size for h=c  2:5 is 301  201 (in the
streamwise and normal directions, respectively).

Inviscid Computations
For verification and validation purposes, the linear theory results
are compared with inviscid computations on a NACA 0003 airfoil.
This airfoil section was chosen because it roughly approximates the
flat plate without singularities and acts a precursor for subsequent
validation with experimental data on oscillating airfoils. Fig. 4 Sample mesh system for inviscid NACA 0003 computations.
1686 DURAISAMY, MCCROSKEY, AND BAEDER

7.5 Table 1 Comparison of first harmonic of lift response for NACA 0003
M=0.2 (Theory)
(inviscid computation) and flat plate (linear theory) at M
0:3
M=0.2 (CFD)
M=0.3 (Theory) h=c k jCL
jtheory theory jCL
jComputed Computed
M=0.3 (CFD)
1.25 0 7.037 0 7.242 0
7
2.50 0 6.703 0 6.838 0
5.00 0 6.616 0 6.712 0
10.0 0 6.594 0 6.602 0
1.25 0.05 6.920 1:937 7.087 2:578
Lα

2.5 0.05 6.505 3:463 6.623 3:809

C

5.0 0.05 6.284 4:824 6.463 4:541

10.0 0.05 6.108 5:383 6.347 4:794
6.5
1.25 0.1 6.618 2:936 6.737 3:468
2.5 0.1 6.049 4:825 6.159 5:050
5.0 0.1 5.697 5:439 5.926 6:017
10.0 0.1 5.538 4:791 5.749 6:371
1.25 0.15 6.234 2:479 6.316 2:719
2.5 0.15 5.569 3:576 5.668 3:788
6 5.0 0.15 5.237 2:847 5.394 4:408
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
h/c 10.0 0.15 5.161 2:103 5.199 3:658
Fig. 5 Comparison between theory (flat plate) and inviscid 1.25 0.2 5.859 0:529 5.933 0:383
computation (NACA 0003) for steady flow. 2.5 0.2 5.187 0:344 5.277 0:583
5.0 0.2 4.939 1.164 4.996 0:584
10.0 0.2 4.902 1.068 4.871 0.190
However, the level of agreement confirms the validity of the theory
and also serves as a verification for the CFD computations.
coefficient (instantaneous pressure with a subtract of the pressure
corresponding to steady flow at mean
) at a sample time. The
Validity of Linear Theory Near Resonance Conditions complicated interaction of a circular acoustic pulse (in the figure,
As observed in Fig. 6, the comparison between linear theory and centered at fx; yg  f3; 0g and of radius 3 with waves reflecting off
inviscid CFD prove to be good for the conditions that were evaluated. the wall) is evident. It has to be mentioned that the computed solution
The validity of the linear theory will now be examined at a higher may not be entirely physical because 2-D acoustic propagation is
Mach number near resonance conditions. Figure 8 shows the essentially different compared to the 3-D problem.
amplitude and phasing of the lift response at M  0:5. As a
representative case, h=c  5:0 will be considered, and for this case,
acoustic resonance occurs near k  0:25. Figure 9 compares the Validations with Experimental Data
linear theory with inviscid calculations and it is evident that near To validate the linear theory and the CFD methodology with
resonance, the discrepancy in both the amplitude and phasing is experiments, comparison with oscillating NACA 0012 data from the
substantial. This can be attributed to the damping introduced by the U.S. Army Mobility Research and Development Laboratory
nonlinear interactions. Figure 10 shows the “perturbation” pressure (AMRDL)-Ames 7  10 ft subsonic wind tunnel [1,2] is attempted.

CFD (NACA 0003) CFD (NACA 0003) CFD (NACA 0003)

0.1 Theory (Flat plate) 0.1 Theory (Flat plate) 0.1 Theory (Flat plate)

0.05 0.05 0.05

CL

CL

CL

0 0 0

−0.05 −0.05 −0.05

−0.1 −0.1 −0.1

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
t/T t/T t/T

a) h/c=1.25 b) h/c=2.5 c) h/c=5.0

0.1 0.1 CFD (NACA 0003) 0.1 CFD (NACA 0003)

CFD (NACA 0003) Theory (Flat plate) Theory (Flat plate)
Theory (Flat plate)

0.05 0.05 0.05

CL

CL

0 0 0
C

−0.05 −0.05 −0.05

−0.1 −0.1 −0.1

−1 −0.5 0 0.5 1 −1 −0.5 0 0.5 1 −1 −0.5 0 0.5 1

α α α

d) h/c=1.25 e) h/c=2.5f) h/c=5.0

Fig. 6 Comparison of lift response for oscillating NACA 0003 (inviscid computation) and flat plate (linear theory) at M
0:3,

1 sin2kMt, k
0:1:
a), b), c) vs time; d), e), f) vs
.
 DURAISAMY, MCCROSKEY, AND BAEDER 1687

6
7.5
k=0.05 k=0.05

k=0.1 4 k=0.1
7
k=0.15 k=0.15

Phase angle (degrees)

2
k=0.2 k=0.2
6.5
0

| Lα
6

|C
−2

5.5
−4

5 −6

4.5 −8
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
h/c h/c
a) Lift curve slope b) Phase angle
Fig. 7 Comparison of first harmonic of lift response for oscillating NACA 0003 (inviscid computation, lines  symbols) and flat plate (linear theory,
lines) at M
0:3.

9
15

8 Increasing k 10
k=0.25
7

Phase angle (degrees)

5

6 0 k=0.0
|
Lα
|C

k=0.175
5 −5
k=0.1
k=0.05
4 −10

3 −15

2 1
−20 1
10 10
h/c h/c

a) Amplitude of lift curve slope b) Phase angle of lift response

Fig. 8 Linear theory: lift slope and phase response for oscillating flat plate at M
0:5, h=c
0:5.

0.15 0.15 0.15 0.15

CFD (NACA 0003) CFD (NACA 0003) CFD (NACA 0003) CFD (NACA 0003)
0.1 Theory (Flat plate) 0.1 Theory (Flat plate) 0.1 Theory (Flat plate) 0.1 Theory (Flat plate)

0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05

CL

CL

0 0 0 0
C

−0.05 −0.05 −0.05 −0.05

−0.1 −0.1 −0.1 −0.1

−1 −0.5 0 0.5 1 −1 −0.5 0 0.5 1 −1 −0.5 0 0.5 1 −1 −0.5 0 0.5 1

α α α α

a) k=0.1 b) k=0.15 c) k=0.2 d) k=0.25

Fig. 9 Comparison of lift response for oscillating NACA 0003 (inviscid computation) and flat plate (linear theory) at M
0:5,

1 sin2kMt.

A set of test cases are shown in Table 2. This set was chosen because
it represents an effective frequency sweep at attached flow
conditions. Figure 11 compares the linear theory and RANS
computations for the aforementioned cases. In these cases, even
though thickness effects can be expected to be more prominent than
in the NACA 0003 cases, the overall agreement of the linear theory
with experiments and computations is good. The computed pressure
distributions (for a sample case, case 2) are shown in Fig. 12 and the
level of agreement effectively validates the RANS solver.

Table 2 Experimental test cases for validation of oscillating NACA

0012 airfoil data with linear theory and RANS computations: !
2kM
Case h=c k
, deg M Re Reference
1 2.5 0.01 4:95  5 sin
!t 0.3 3:93  106 [2]
2 2.5 0.1 4:95  5 sin
!t 0.3 3:93  106 [2]
3 1.25 0.15 6  6 sin
!t 0.1 2:5  106 [1]
Fig. 10 Contours of perturbation pressure coefficient for NACA 0003 4 1.25 0.24 6  6 sin
!t 0.1 2:5  106 [1]
at M
0:5, k
0:25, t=T
0:6.
1688 DURAISAMY, MCCROSKEY, AND BAEDER

1.2 1.4
Expt
Expt
Linear Theory
1 Linear Theory 1.2 Computation
Computation

0.8 1

0.6 0.8

CL
CL

0.4 0.6

0.2 0.4

0 0.2

−0.2 0
−2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 −2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
α α

a) Case 1 (k = 0.01) b) Case 2 (k = 0.1)

Expt Expt
1.2 Linear Theory 1.2 Linear Theory
Computation Computation

1 1

0.8 0.8
CL

L
C
0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
α α

c) Case 3 (k = 0.15) d) Case 4 (k = 0.24)

Fig. 11 Comparison of lift response for several NACA 0012 configurations. Refer to Table 2 for further details.

6
4
3.5 5
3
4
2.5
2 3
1.5
−Cp
p
−C

2
1
0.5 1
0
0
−0.5
−1 −1
−1.5
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
x/c x/c

a) α = 4.94º, t/T = 0 b) α = 9.94º, t/T = 0.25

4 4

3.5 3.5

3 3
2.5 2.5
2 2
1.5 1.5
p

p
−C

−C

1 1
0.5 0.5

0 0
−0.5 −0.5

−1 −1

−1.5 −1.5
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
x/c x/c

c) α = 4.94º, t/T = 0.5 d) α = −0.06º, t/T = 0.75

Fig. 12 Case 2: surface pressure distribution.
 DURAISAMY, MCCROSKEY, AND BAEDER 1689

1.4 1.4
Expt Expt
1.2 With Walls 1.2 Inviscid Walls
Without Walls Viscous Walls

1 1

0.8 0.8
CL

CL
0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
−2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 −2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
α α
a) Effect of inclusion of wind tunnel wall b) Effect of type of wind tunnel wall boundary
condition
Fig. 13 Case 2: effect of wind tunnel wall.

2.5
1) For steady flow, there is significant lift augmentation (compared
to a freestream test) at wall distances approximately less than three
Experiment chords from the airfoil surface.
h/c=2.5
h/c=∞ 2) For unsteady flow, whereas the effect on the magnitude of the
2 lift curve slope is again significant for wall distances less than three
chords from the airfoil surface, the phasing is significantly affected at
all wall distances for compressible flow. The effect of the wind
1.5 tunnel wall on the deviation of the phase angle (from free-air
conditions) is, in general, larger for increasing frequencies. The lift
response is drastically altered near conditions corresponding to
CL

acoustic resonance between the airfoil and wind tunnel walls.

1 The theoretical results were validated with compressible Euler
calculations. The level of agreement of the predicted lift response
with theory was found to be very high for conditions that are not near
0.5 the acoustic resonance. Linear theory and RANS calculations also
compare well with experimental data corresponding to subsonic high
Reynolds number attached flow at various oscillating frequencies.
For all the test cases, the importance of accounting for the wind
0
0 5 10 15 20 tunnel wall is clearly established.
α The aforementioned tests confirm the validity of the linear theory
Fig. 14 Lift response of SC1095 airfoil undergoing dynamic stall at as a low-cost tool for interpreting oscillating airfoil wind tunnel data
M
0:302, k
0:099. and extrapolating the same to freestream conditions. In addition, the
RANS methodology also proves to be a reliable predictive means to
study unsteady compressible flows in the presence of interfering
Figure 13 further confirms the fact that inclusion of the wind wind tunnel walls.
tunnel walls significantly affects the computed lift curve slope.
However, as expected from Fig. 3, the difference in phase angle for
this combination of M and k is not considerably different for h=c  Acknowledgments
2:5 and h=c  1. This work is sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) under U.S. Army Research Office Contract
Impact on Dynamic Stall Calculations No. W911NF-04-C-0102. The authors would like to thank the
For practical implications of the aforementioned interference DARPA project review team for their encouragement and support.
effects (and also to validate the numerical algorithm under separated
flow conditions), a dynamic stall simulation is considered. The
References
experiment [2] corresponds to an SC1095 airfoil at M  0:302,
Re  3:92  106 , k  0:099, oscillating at an angle of attack given [1] McAlister, K. W., Carr, L. W., and McCroskey, W. J., “Dynamic Stall
Experiments on the NACA 0012 Airfoil,” NASA Technical Paper 1100,
by
 9:78  9:9 sin
!t. The wind tunnel walls are at a distance of
1978.
2:5c from the airfoil surface. As seen from Fig. 14, inclusion of wind [2] McAlister, K. W., Pucci, S. L., McCroskey, W. J., and Carr, L. W., “An
tunnel walls in the computation significantly improves the prediction Experimental Study of Dynamic Stall on Advanced Airfoil Sections,”
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showed that at the tunnel walls, the variation of the pressure [3] Martin, P. B., McAlister, K. W., Chandrasekhara, M. S., and Geissler,
coefficient ranged between 0:3 and remained significant up to five W., “Dynamic Stall Measurements and Computations for a VR-12
chords upstream and downstream of the airfoil. Airfoil with a Variable Droop Leading Edge,” 59th Annual Forum of
the American Helicopter Society Proceedings [CD-ROM], American
Helicopter Society, Phoenix, AZ, 2003.
Conclusions [4] Datta, A., and Chopra, I., “Prediction of UH-60A Dynamic Stall Loads
in High Altitude Level Flight Using CFD/CSD Coupling,” 61st Annual
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