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Lift Coefficient Due To Thin Cambered Airfoils Using Lumped Vortex Panel Method

Supervisor : Prof.Dr.Mohamed Madbouly Cairo University Faculty of Engineering Aerospace Department

Abstract The solution of Laplaces equation describing the potential flow problems about thin cambered airfoils is explained in this report by simulating the disturbance in the velocity field with lumped vortex panels distributed on the camber line such that the Kutta-Joukowski trailing edge condition is satisfied without adding extra conditions at the trailing edge, the strengths of these assumed elementary solutions are then calculated by enforcing the zero normal flow condition on the solid boundaries. This method together with the thin airfoil theory are implemented in a graphical user interface computer code written in MATLAB programming language, in the hope it will be useful to understand the philosophy of the potential flow

Symbols Airfoil chord Total number of panels Position vector Tangential velocity component in global coordinate system Tangential velocity component in local coordinate system Free stream velocity Normal velocity component in global coordinate system Normal velocity component in local coordinate system x-distance x-distance location of point vortex z-distance z-distance location of point vortex Air density Velocity Potential Strength of an elementary vortex per unit length Panel inclination Ratio between any circles perimeter to its diameter

Identifying The Problem : Consider a point vortex located at with strength as shown in figure (1)

Figure (1) The Influence of A Point Vortex At Point P The increment to the velocity potential at point is :

Now, if a camber line is divided into a number of flat panels, with a point vortex at the quarter of each panel and a collocation point at the three quarters location of each panel as shown in figure (2)

Figure (2) Lumped Vortex Discretization of Thin Cambered Airfoil The velocity induced at collocation point i due to point vortex at panel j in local coordinate system of panel j equals to :

Where

Figure (3) Panel Inclination If is the panel inclination, then the induced velocities in the global coordinate system are

And consequently

Since the summation of the normal velocity induced at each collocation point due to all the vortices at all elements together with the free stream component must be zero, then :

Retyping this equation in a matrix form

Solve for the vortices

And According to Kutta-Joukowski Lift Theorem

At

, and the Airfoil chord = 1

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