Unsteady airloads on static airfoils through high angles of attack and in reverse flow

The present work is aimed at understanding the sources, magnitude, and frequency of unsteady airloads acting on airfoils at high angles of attack and in reverse flow in order to improve the design of rotor blades for high-speed helicopters and wind turbines. Four rotor blade airfoils were tested at angles of attack through 180° and at three Reynolds numbers, up to one million. The unsteady airloads acting on each airfoil were calculated by integrating time-resolved pressure measurements acquired along the midspan of the airfoil. Unsteady velocity fields for a NACA 0012 were calculated from time-resolved particle image velocimetry measurements. For all airfoils, the unsteady airloads were found to be large in magnitude near stall, when an unstable shear layer induces unsteady flow on the suction side of the airfoil. At post-stall angles of attack, the unsteady airloads generally decreased as a region of separated flow builds over the suction side. As the angle of attack was increased further, the airloads become periodic and the flow entered the deep stall vortex shedding regime. At high angles of attack (30°≤α⩽150°), the unsteady airloads were greatest for airfoils with a blunt aerodynamic trailing edge due to unsteady induced flow from trailing edge vortices. Aerodynamic hysteresis was shown to cause large unsteady airloads as the static angle of attack is decreased near stall. The unsteady airloads of a NACA 0012 in reverse flow were observed to be insensitive to Reynolds number due to flow separation at the sharp leading edge of this relatively thin airfoil.