Aerodynamics Laboratory Experiment #4

Measurement of Pressure Distribution over a Cambered Airfoil

Objectives
The purpose of the experiment is to measure the surface pressure distribution and calculate aerodynamic coefficients from those pressure measurements for a cambered airfoil at a specified Reynolds number, Re, as well as introducing flow measurements and wind tunnel testing.

Background
A wing is a three-dimensional shape that, when immersed in an appropriate flow, will produce a usable force from a pressure imbalance. As shown in Fig. 1, an airfoil is a two dimensional crosssection of a wing, sliced in the general direction of the flow. The airfoil displays the aerodynamic shape used to produce a pressure imbalance. The net force of the pressure imbalance (in a real fluid, frictional forces are also present), summed over the wing, is resolved into lift and drag. By definition, lift is the net force component perpendicular to the flow and drag is the net force component parallel to the flow. This experiment focuses on lift.

Figure 1. Wing Features The design of a wing generally begins with the airfoil. The airfoil schematic in Fig. 2 shows some of the associated nomenclature. Once the airfoil is designed to produce a certain pressure imbalance and associated lift, a wing is constructed by projecting the airfoil into the third dimension, i.e., the spanwise dimension. Other things may be done to tailor the performance of the wing such as using different airfoil sections over the span, or introducing twist by slightly rotating the sections as one moves outward in span. There is a tremendous literature describing the large number of airfoils developed primarily for aeronautical applications over the past 90 years. Before proceeding, let us define the nondimensional parameter called the coefficient of lift ________________________________________________________________________________

CL =

L L = 1 q S 2 U S 2

(1)

where L is the lift, q is the dynamic pressure, and S is some reference area. Remember, dimensionless coefficients such as CL enable us to scale experimental results from sub scale models to full scale vehicles. Another thing to note is by writing equation (1) like,
L= 1 2 U SC L 2

(2)

For incompressible flow, and fixed wing geometry, we can see that for a fixed coefficient of lift CL, the lift is directly proportional to the square of the speed. This means that the faster the wing moves through the fluid, the more lift is generated. That is why an airplane has to pick up speed down the runway before the it is able to takeoff. In order to takeoff, the wings (the entire vehicle) must produce more lift than the total gross weight of the aircraft (gross weight is the absolute total weight, i.e., including passengers, luggage, fuel, etc.). When the airplane is cruising at a constant altitude, the lift only has to balance, not exceed, the weight.

Figure 2. Airfoil schematic and nomenclature In the airfoil schematic above, notice that the shape is not symmetric, in fact the average shape is curved. The curvature in the airfoil shape is called camber. Note that if the upper and lower surfaces are identical in shape, the mean camber line and the chord line coincide and the airfoil is symmetric. A cambered airfoil will produce lift, even at = 0o . Everyone who has driven, or ridden in a car has probably held a hand out an open window as if it were a wing. You certainly noticed that when you incline your hand it is either forced up or down, depending on the angle of attack. To lift your hand, you raise the leading edge upward. This is also done with truly winged bodies such as airplanes. As mentioned previously, when you see an airplane takeoff, it first builds up speed along the runway, then the pilot rotates the vehicle such that the wings have a relatively large positive . From experience we know that increasing the of our hand increases the amount of lift, to a certain point (at some point, your hand tends to y more backwards than upwards). We mentioned earlier that lift results from an imbalance of pressure forces on the upper and lower surface of the wing. With the wind tunnel and an appropriately instrumented airfoil model, we can

examine the distribution of pressure on the upper and lower surface using the nondimensional coefficient of pressure Cp .
Cp = p p 1 2 U 2

(3)

Knowing the distribution of pressure on the upper and lower surface we can integrate (sum) all the contributions to determine the net force perpendicular to the airfoil chord line and the net force perpendicular to the air flow, i.e., the lift. We can then construct a plot to see how the pressure distributions and the lift vary with respect to the angle of attack. Any ideas of how these distributions may appear for a wing that has stalled? What about a symmetric wing at zero angle of attack? The schematic in Fig. 3 shows a typical pressure distribution on an airfoil that is producing lift. Note that the plot is inverted and shows negative values of Cp in the upper half plane and positive values in the lower half plane. A negative Cp value means the pressure is lower than the freestream pressure pand positive values correspond to pressures higher than p. So, when a wing is producing lift, the upper surface generally has a net negative Cp distribution (a net suction), while the lower surface generally has, but not always, a net positive Cp distribution. Pressure is a stress, i.e., it is a force per unit area. In order to determine the actual force produced by a stress, we must sum all the pressure contributions over the entire surface, thus we must integrate the pressure over the surface, If we split the airfoil surface into upper (subscript u ) and lower (subscript l ) parts, we can write the coefficient of lift for the airfoil as
Cl = 1 1 1 C pl dx C pu dx = (C pl C pu )dx c LE c LE c LE
TE TE TE

(4)

Figure 3 Distribution of the coefficient of pressure These integrals represent the cross-hatched areas under the curves in the schematic of Fig. 3. In these expressions, x is the coordinate along the chord line and c is the length of the chord, i.e. the length from the LE to the TE, so we can define a dimensionless variable x/c that varies from 0 at the leading edge LE, to 1 at the trailing edge TE. Because c is a constant, we can move it inside the integral and write the Cl equation in terms of the fraction of the chord x/c.

x Cl = (C pl C pu ) d ( ) c 0

(5)

In words, equation (5) says the sectional lift coefficient is equal to the difference between pressure coefficients. Evaluated on the lower surface and upper surface, integrated along the chord line in terms of the fractional distance measured from the leading edge to the trailing edge. Look again at the schematic that shows the pressure distribution for a lift-producing wing. The integral in equation (5) represents the cross hatched area between the Cpu and Cpl curves. Since Cpu is negative, note that the negative sign in equation (5) causes the Cpu contribution to be positive, so that the two portions of the integral are both positive. Sometimes much of the Cpl contribution is negative, but for positive lift, the net difference in equation (5) is positive. Since the Cp values are determined experimentally, we must resort to a numerical method for actually computing the integral in equation (5). We can use one of the most simple numerical methods for computing integrals, the trapezoidal rule. Figure 4 shows a schematic of the wind tunnel setup.

Figure 4. Wind tunnel schematic

Experimental setup
As mentioned before, the objective of the experiment is to determine the Cp distribution on the surface of a cambered airfoil and calculate the section lift coefficient. All experiments will be carried out in the low speed open- circuit wind tunnel facility at Aerospace Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University which has a test section cross section of 1.2m 0.8m and a length of 2.5m and a maximum speed of 35 m/s. We will use the multi-tubes manometer to measure the surface pressure distributions (consists of 36 manometers). The manometer gives you the difference of pressure between the pressure you are trying to measure and the ambient or atmospheric pressure as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 Diagram showing connections of a single tube of the multi- tube manometer.

Note that water column rise in the manometer tube of a multi-tube manometer means suction or negative pressure where as column drop means positive pressure. The two-dimensional cambered airfoil used in the present experiments has 30 pressure taps. Only two taps (number 10 and number 22) do not work and the remaining 28 taps are working properly and connected to the multi- tube manometer. Table 1 and table 2 present the coordinates of airfoil surfaces (upper and lower) and the coordinates of the pressure taps respectively. Table 2 can serve also as an experimental data sheet for collecting data from the multi-tube manometer. Figure 6 shows the airfoil with pressure tap location. Figure 7 Shows photographs of the present experimental setup.
0.15 4 0.1 y/c 0.05 0 -0.05 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 x/c 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 2 3 7 8 9 10

11

12 13 14 15 17 16

30

29

Figure 6 Cambered airfoil, -, and pressure taps o

Experimental Procedure
The main part of the experiment is to obtain pressure distribution on the airfoil and compute the section lift coefficient at different angle of attack. The experiment procedure is as follow: . 1. Examine the Pitot-Static probe. Make sure it is level. 2. Start the wind tunnel and adjust the test section speed (a) Record the static pressure. (b) Record the dynamic pressure. (c) Compute the airspeed from the following equation

U =

2 water g hpitotstatic tube 2( ptotal pstatic) = air air

(6)

3. Record the manometer readings for the upper and lower surface at onto the experimental data sheet (Table 2) 4. Record the manometer readings onto an Excel spreadsheet and calculate the Cp from the following equation:
Cp = p p atm water g H multitube = 1 1 2 2 U air U 2 2
manometet

(7)

5. Compute and plot at each angle of attack, , the distribution of Cp around the airfoil. 6. Compute the Cl. 7. Plot Cl versus . _______________________________