Experimental study of airfoil performance with vortex generators

Abstract

The canard airfoil from the Voyager aircraft was tested in Ohio State University's subsonic wind tunnel. This highly optimized laminar flow section had good clean airfoil performance, but suffered severe lift and drag penalties with early boundary-layer transition. These performance penalties resulted from a midchord boundary-layer separation. An experimental program was conducted to document this problem and then to design and test vortex generators in order to improve the tripped airfoil performance while having the least effect on the clean airfoil. A set of properly designed vortex generators were found to increase the lift and reduce the drag of the contaminated airfoil. A brief study documented a significant drag rise due to a rough surface in the turbulent boundary-layer region.